Fact-check: Mohmand Dam to be completed by 2026-27, not next year
Once completed, the dam will generate 800 megawatts of electricity
Updated Monday Jul 24 2023
Social media users allege that work on the Mohmand Dam, a major hydro-power complex being built in northwest Pakistan, has neared completion and will start supplying electricity to the national grid from next year.
The claim is false.
Claim
“One of the great achievements of Imran Khan, Mohmand Dam’s work has entered the final stage and next year 1,700 megawatts of cheap electricity will enter the system,” wrote a Twitter account on June 13.
“The media will not tell you this,” the user added.
The tweet has been retweeted over 890 times and liked over 1,000 times, to date.
On June 21, a Facebook user shared a similar claim.
This post had been shared 173 times, at the time of writing
The identical text was shared by other Twitter and Facebook users as well here, here and here.
Fact
Construction on the Mohmand Dam is still ongoing and is expected to be completed by the year 2026 or 2027, confirm officials.
Geo Fact Check reached out to the public relations division of the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA), a government-run agency tasked with the maintenance of water and power resources in the country, to confirm the veracity of the claim.
WAPDA shared an official document, as well as recent photographs of the Mohmand Dam site with Geo Fact Check.
According to the document, work on the Mohmand Dam Hydropower Project began in May 2019. The dam is being built on the Swat river in the Mohmand district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The document further states that construction is progressing at 12 sites for the Dam and WAPDA “is determined to complete it by 2026-27” at a PC-1 approved cost of Rs309.56 billion. The PC-1 of the project was approved on April 26, 2018.
Once completed, the Dam will generate 800 megawatts of electricity, it added.
During its investigation, using image reverse search engines, Geo Fact Check also found that the pictures being shared by social media users, alongside their claims, are not of the Mohmand Dam, but were in fact of the Hoover Dam located in the United States.
Additional reporting by Fayyaz Hussain.
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