Source: China Central Radio and Television International Online
International Online Report (Reporter Liu Chang) As a landmark project and pioneering project for jointly building the "Belt and Road", over the past 9 years, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has brought tens of billions of dollars of direct investment to Pakistan , bringing huge development to Pakistan's infrastructure, industry, agriculture and other fields, and has also created many jobs and changed the lives of many ordinary Pakistani people. Fazal Rahim, a local employee of the Qasim Power Station of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, has personally felt this change.
The first time I met Fazal Rahim was at the award ceremony for outstanding Pakistani employees of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Project held by the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan on the eve of New Year's Day in 2022. As an outstanding Pakistani employee of Pakistan Kasim Port Power Generation Co., Ltd., Fazal Rahim delivered his award speech in fluent Chinese. "I am very happy today and I feel very honored. Thank you very much for the Chinese Embassy for arranging this event for us. At the beginning, I only spoke simple Chinese and I don't know much about many of the work related to power stations. In the past five or six years, many Chinese brothers have helped me a lot and learned a lot. I am very grateful to the Chinese brothers, the company leaders, the Chinese government and the Chinese Embassy."
Rahim's series of thanks comes from the heart. During the years he worked at the Qasim Power Station, he grew from a layman who only speaks a little Chinese and has no practical experience in the power station to a business purchasing manager of the power station. For Rahim, the Qasim power station not only provided him with a stable and reliable job, but also taught him professional skills, broadened his horizons, and brought earth-shaking changes to his and his family's lives. Recently, Rahim told reporters from the Central Station in detail about his story at the power station. "My Chinese name is Yang Fan, and he comes from Hongza , the northernmost part of Pakistan. That place is very close to China. I have 5 brothers and 2 sisters. My father is a carpenter and builds bridges and houses in the north. He works very hard. Although he doesn't earn much money, he spends most of his income to us and sends us to the best English school in the local area."
Rahim said that after graduating from high school, he helped the locals process locally produced gems and sells them to foreign tourists. However, due to the later invasion of Afghanistan , northwestern Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan, was affected, and fewer foreign tourists were found, making his work unsustainable. At the same time, his relatives and friends who are doing business in China are doing well, and some friends have found good jobs in Chinese companies. He also had the idea of going to China to find opportunities. "My own experience with my relatives and friends makes me feel more and more that our future is connected to China, so I want to learn Chinese and learn Chinese technology. I told my father this idea, and he is also very supportive. I went to the National Modern Language University in Islamabad for one year to study Chinese for one year. I participated in the Chinese Bridge competition and won second place, and got the opportunity to study in China for one year."
After studying Chinese for one year in China, Rahim returned to Pakistan and studied finance at Alkeel University. In 2015, the Qasim Power Station, the first large-scale power and energy project of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, was just launched in Pakistan and urgently needed to recruit people. Rahim came to this project with a friend's introduction and worked as an ordinary employee in the Comprehensive Management Department. Due to his certain Chinese ability, he was assigned to security contact, business reception, conference translation and other work. "When I first arrived at the project, I didn't know anything, but my Chinese colleagues had a lot of experience. They took me to work together and taught me how to manage, communicate and coordinate. During the peak construction period of the project, there were tens of thousands of Pakistanis, some of whom knew technology, but most of them had never worked in power stations, just like me. Chinese colleagues trained us a lot and shared their advanced engineering technology and management philosophy with us. We learned the world's most advanced technology from our Chinese colleagues, and it will be easy no matter where we go to find a job in the future.”
Rahim's ability in professional skills and management coordination has improved rapidly. He was later transferred to the Planning and Operation Department to participate in power station business and contract management. Due to his outstanding work, he was awarded the titles of "Haito Star" of China Power Construction Overseas Investment Co., Ltd. and "Advanced Worker" of Kasim Power Generation Co., Ltd. in March 2016, and was named the company's "Outstanding Foreign Employee" in 2017. While his career is developing rapidly, Rahim also witnessed the construction speed of Kasim Power Station with his own eyes. "I can't believe the speed of China. When I first arrived at the project in 2015, Kasim was still bare. In just over two years, a world-class power station was built. ”
In November 2017, the first unit of the power station was put into production and power generation. In April 2018, the power station entered commercial operation 67 days ahead of schedule. The designed annual power generation is 9 billion kWh, which can meet the electricity demand of 4 million households in Pakistan. Rahim said that the cumulative power generation of the power station has reached 38 billion kWh. With the installed capacity accounting for 3% of the country, the on-grid power of the Qasim Power Station accounts for 7% of the country's total on-grid power, which greatly alleviated the problem of Pakistan's power shortage. "When I was a child, the problem of power outage in Pakistan was very (serious), and there was a shutdown of eight or nine times a day in summer. After 2017, electricity shortages in large cities and small places in Pakistan have improved greatly. ”
After working at the Qasim Power Station for 7 years, Rahim has made his family's life greatly improved through hard work. He took over the burden on his father's shoulders, provided all the tuition and living expenses for his three younger brothers studying in Karachi, helped his family buy land and build a house in his hometown, and took his parents to Karachi every winter to check his health. After arranging the life of the whole family, he can finally consider his lifelong affairs. In 2018, he married a virtuous and beautiful woman in his hometown, and his son is now two years old. He is just like However, it has become the backbone and pride of the whole family.
Rahim is very grateful for the work provided by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Qasim Power Station, and he also wants to use his own learning to benefit more Pakistani people. In Rahim's view, in addition to the Qasim Power Station, under the framework of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, China has also built a large number of roads and power stations for Pakistan, helping Pakistan develop agriculture, industrial parks and many livelihood projects... Rahim said: "The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project is China bringing the achievements and experiences of reform and opening up to Pakistan to help Pakistan develop. In the past, only a few big cities in Pakistan, such as Karachi, , Lahore, , developed rapidly, but the projects in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor are spread across Pakistani provinces, driving the whole country to develop together and also making our people, a multi-ethnic country, more united. I have seen with my own eyes that over the past few years, Pakistan's highways have been unobstructed from south to north, and there are less and less power outages. Many ordinary Pakistanis have found jobs, learned technology, and improved their lives from Chinese projects. ”
