AnyTV News No aircraft, no passenger, no facility; Pakistan's new airport became a mystery

Image Source: AP
Gwadar international airport

Gwadar: Pakistan’s newest and most expensive airport is like a mystery, where there is neither an aircraft nor a passenger. It is difficult to reveal when it will open for a commercial purpose, about the new Gwadar International Airport at a cost of US $ 24 million completely funded by China. The airport, which was built in October 2024, is completely different from the poor and turbulent south-western Balochistan province around it.

There is no change in Gwadar

China has been investing billions of dollars in Balochistan and Gwadar under the ‘China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’ or CPEC project for the past decade. The project connects its western Xinjiang province to the Arabian Sea. The authorities have praised it by calling it transformative, but there is no significant change in Gwadar. The city is not connected to the national grid, the electric neighbor comes from Iran or solar panel and there is not enough clean water. The airport with 4,00,000 passenger capacity is not a priority for the city’s 90,000 people.

‘Airport is for China’

Azim Khalid, an expert and international relations expert in Pakistan-China relations, said, “This airport is not for Pakistan or Gwadar. This is for China, so that it can provide safe access to its citizens to Gwadar and Balochistan. ”CPEC has promoted resource -rich and strategically important torture in Balochistan for decades. Local people are targeting Pakistani soldiers and Chinese workers at the province and other places. Members of the ethnic Baloch minority community of Pakistan say that the government discriminates with them and is deprived of opportunities available elsewhere in the country. However, the government denies these allegations.

Image Source: AP

Gwadar international airport

Gwadar is difficult to go

Gwadar is a beautiful place, but there is a belief that going here is dangerous or difficult. Flight is operated on only one commercial route from Gwadar’s domestic airport. Flight is operated three times a week to Karachi. Khuda Bakhsh Hashim (76), a resident of Gwadar, said that he wants to see the CPEC succeeding, so that the local people, especially the youth could get any purpose in employment, hope and life, but it did not happen.

Not a single resident of Gwadar got a job

Security concerns delayed the inauguration of the Gwadar International Airport and inaugurated it through a video conference by Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and his Chinese counterpart Lee Kiang. The first flight was banned for media and common people. District President of ‘Balochistan Awami Party’ Abdul Gafoor Hoth said that not a single resident of Gwadar was kept to work at the airport, “not even as a watchman.” (Language)