HERAT CITY(SW): Ali Ahmad Osmani, Minister of Water and Energy, has said that the Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam (Salma Dam) project was approaching its completion and by the next spring two big turbines with the capacity of producing 28 megawatts of power would be installed at the dam.
He travelled to Herat to monitor the project and said that once the two turbines get installed, the third turbine would also be installed during summer, which would increase the production of energy to 42 megawatts.
According to him, the 28 megawatt of energy could provide part of the Herat city with the power but once the project is fully completed, and the three turbines installed, President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and the Minister of Water and Energy would decide which areas should benefit from it.
The Minister said that currently 68 million cubic of water has been reserved in the Afghan-India Friendship Dam (Salma Dam) and it would soon increase to 120 million cubic. He added that there was no security challenge in the area.
H. Kumar Meshra, the Indian Consulate General in Herat, expressed satisfaction with the progress the project has made. He said that India has always supported Afghanistan and would continue its support in the future.
The dam is located in the western Herat city near Iran and has storage capacity of 640 million cubic meters. Afghanistan is likely to get around 42 MW of power from it besides improved irrigation facilities for some 80,000 hectares of land.
The dam was first conceived in the late 1970s during the government of Daud Khan. The project was left incomplete for a significant period of time due to the ongoing instability caused by the civil war.
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