Pakistan will pay $2.58 million in compensation to the families of five Chinese engineers who were killed in March in a terrorist attack near Shangla in northwest Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
A suicide bomber targeted the vehicle of the Chinese engineers in the town of Bisham as they were heading to Dasu Dam, the site of a key hydroelectric dam being constructed by a Chinese company, located about 270km from the capital.
Pakistan’s finance ministry said in a statement that the government has approved the compensation of $516,000 each for the families of the five Chinese workers of China Gezhouba Group. This compensation is based on the pattern of $11.6 million previous such payments to Chinese workers (10 killed and 26 injured) in 2021 working on the same project and to two Chinese workers of Gomal Zam Dam, killed in 2004.
Pakistan government will also pay Rs2.5 million ($8,950) to the family of the Pakistani driver who also died in the March 26 attack.
The decision was announced after a meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet presided over by Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb.
“The amount would be transferred immediately to the account of the Pakistani embassy in Beijing for onward payments to the families of the deceased Chinese nationals through appropriate channels,” according to a top finance ministry official.
The compensation announcement was made a day before the 13th joint cooperation committee meeting of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and ahead of the upcoming visit of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to Beijing early next month to push for the second phase of the CPEC that has been going through a rough patch for almost five years.