Water and Power Development Authority

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The Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) is a major infrastructure development company owned by the Government of Pakistan. WAPDA was created in 1958 as a Semi-Autonomous Body for the purpose of coordinating and giving a unified direction to the development of schemes in Water and Power Sectors, which were previously being dealt with, by the respective Electricity and Irrigation Department of the Provinces.

WAPDA objectives are:

To produce electricity across Pakistan
To maintain energy creating plants
To supply water to public.

It services many grid stations through the country and oversees large dams such as Tarbela and Mangla.

WAPDA was created in February 1958 as a semi autonomous body to coordinate the large investments in water projects and the huge task of expanding the electricity network all over the country.

Provincial departments which were dealing with these subjects were combined into a federally controlled organization.

The original charter was to investigate, plan, and execute projects such as:

Electric power generation
Transmission and distribution
Irrigation
Water supply
Drainage prevention of water logging
Flood management
Inland navigation

The total installed capacity in 1959 was 119 MW, the creation of WAPDA accelerated the pace of expansion of the electricity system and network which in 2006 had an installed capacity of 17395 MW, a 146 times increase in last 47 years, an average annual growth rate of about 11.2% over the period 1959.

The organization is now in the process of being split up into smaller organizations.