Bartang has a Future !

The local energy provider Pamir Energy is currently developing the first master plan for a comprehensive electrification of Bartang. Unfortunately, they are still lacking the funds for putting the plans into practice. For 2015, an exhaustive feasibility study is planned, to be conducted by hydro-engineers, geologist and other experts. Through this, possible sites for erecting hydropower stations will be re-examined, and a more detailled project proposal will be drafted. With this proposal, Pamir Energy would like to apply for funding to a big European foundation that supports ecologically sustainable projects in the development sector.

It would make sense if as a kind of “prelude” first of all the village of Roshorv could be equipped with a powerful hydropower-station. (You can see this village in the very front of the background picture of this website). Roshorv is situated at the highest altitude of all Bartangi villages (nearly 3200 m above sealevel), and has the greatest number of inhabitants (around 800). At the same time, it is the coldest of all villages and, due to altitude, food cooks very late. In Upper Bartang valley it is a popular joke to call meat that is still too chewy “roshorvij bökhj” – “cooked the Roshorvi way”, because in Roshorv it can happen that when the cooking process is only half-completed, fuel is already finished.

Because of these reasons, in Roshorv more energy is needed than elsewhere.

As the electrification of whole Upper Bartang Vally will probably take quite some time (even with successful funding), the help for Roshorv might come too late if electrified only after several years. Therefore, in this case Roshorv deserves some preferential treatment and immediate action.

 Building the necessary 600 KW power plant for Roshorv would require around 3 Mio US-$ (according to current extrapolation).

The fundraising campaign “Bartang has a Future” was launched by a group of friends of Bartang around the cultural anthropologist Stefanie Kicherer and the registered association “Pamir-Hilfe e.V". It aims to provide the project for the electrification of Roshorv with a complete or partial funding.

Even just a partial funding can be useful, facilitating the quick implementation of first concrete steps such as a well-grounded feasibility study by qualified specialists, or the building of the channel. If a part of the project has already been successfully implemented, its credibility rises and therefore also the likelihood to win subsequent funding from stately institutions or foundations.

In case the collected donations do not amount enough for providing a meaningful contribution for the electrification project, the funds will be invested into other benevolent projects in Bartang (see question 1 in the FAQs).

Furthermore we are going to try bringing in donators of kind. Particularly we are thinking of producers of turbines and generators for hydropower stations who could donate parts of the hydropower station for the project, or supply these parts for a favourable price in order to decrease our costs.

In order to implement the project quickly, efficiently and to everybody’s satisfaction, we put emphasis on a good monitoring concept. A neutral supervision committee, comprised by technical specialists, cultural anthropologists and of course people from Bartang, is supposed to evaluate all steps of project implementation in site and, where applicable, make suggestions for improvements.

Read here further information on the involved stakeholders.