Matiltan Hydropower Project


Matiltan Hydropower Project is a proposed run-of-the-river hydro-power generation project which is located in the Gorkin Matiltan region of Kalam valley, District Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, on the left tributary of Suvastu River. The power station has a planned generating capacity of 84 MW.

Delaying tactics of federal government

The project is facing the obstructive tactics of current federal government in the Central Development Working Party, a government department tasked with approving projects whose cost is less than Rs3bn. Members of the CDWP, which is run by the PML-N federal government, say the project cost is too high, and that the cost of the electricity it will generate is also too high for a hydel project. It is hard to avoid the impression that the resistance to this project is political rather than financial. If they are serious about comparing the project costs of Gorkin Matiltan with that of Duber Khwar HPP, they should also note that the latter was begun more than a decade ago.