Implementation of Gwadar master plan to increase employment: Kamal

QUETTA: Chief Minister Balochistan Mir Jam Kamal Khan has said that implementation of Gwadar master plan would lead to increase the employment opportunities and accelerate construction work and developmental activities in the city, ARY News reported on Monday.

This he stated while presiding over a high level meeting in Quetta, here today.

The meeting also gave approval for the transformation of Gwadar from the Municipal committee to the status of the Metropolitan Corporation.

The participants of the meeting reviewed proposed amendments to be adopted in the Local Government Act Balochistan.

Addressing the meeting, the CM said, the government wanted to strengthen the local bodies system.

“The devolution of the powers from top to bottom, to benefit the masses,” he maintained.

Gwadar port

Gwadar – located on the Arabian Sea near Iran and the mouth of the Persian Gulf – to become a regional commercial, industrial and shipping hub, as part of the ambitious China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.

The corridor is designed to give China a shorter, more secure trading route, via Pakistan, to the Middle East and beyond, while also boosting Pakistan’s economy.

Right now, the Gwadar peninsula – a hammerhead-shaped projection of land into the Arabian Sea – is home to about 100,000 people, following completion of the first phase of the port development.

But as development continues, the area’s population is expected to grow to 500,000 by 2020, according to the port authority’s website.

On one side of the peninsula is the deep-sea port, built by the Chinese state-owned China Overseas Holding Company. On the other side lies the local harbor.

The province’s planning and development secretary, told a government committee in December that the total demand for water in Gwadar city was 6.5 million gallons a day, but tankers supplied only 2 million gallons.