Islamabad, May 23: Pakistan is to pay a compensation package of $2.58 million for the five Chinese engineers who were killed in a terror attack on March 26 in Dasu.
The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) is likely to greenlight the package in its next meeting.
The $2.58 million compensation is for the five Chinese employees of China Gezhouba, a contractor company working on the Dasu Hydropower project.
The Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) has recommended the compensation amount to the ECC based on the GDP per capita and purchasing power parity.
A compensation of Rs2.5 million has been recommended for a Pakistani national who was killed in the same attack.
The $2.58 million will be transferred to the account of the Pakistan embassy in Beijing, which will then transfer the payments to the families of the victims via appropriate channels.
The IMC’s recommendations came almost two months after a terror attack in Shangla claimed the lives of five Chinese engineers and one Pakistani when an explosive-laden vehicle hit the bus carrying them on the Karakoram Highway in the Bisham area.
Following the attack, civil work at the sites of the Dasu and Diamer-Bhasha Dams was temporarily suspended by the Chinese companies overseeing operations due to security concerns.
Approximately 991 Chinese engineers were working on both projects, while the local staff was told to stay at home till further instructions.
No group claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, though Islamabad suspected militants linked to the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, were behind it. The TTP, a globally designated terrorist group, denied its involvement in the attacks, saying it targets only Pakistani security forces.
The victims of the suicide bombing were working on the Chinese-funded multibillion-dollar Dasu Dam in the Kohistan district on the Indus River, the biggest hydropower project in Pakistan.
The attack was the second on Chinese engineers associated with the project. In mid-2021, a suicide car bombing targeted a bus convoy in the area, killing nine Chinese nationals and three Pakistani co-workers.
The hydropower project is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC.
In March, Pakistani warplanes bombed TTP hideouts inside Afghan border provinces. Islamabad defended the military action, saying diplomatic efforts to pursue the Taliban to rein in the terrorists did not work.
