China-Pakistan
Pakistan Army enforces China’s strict zero-COVID restrictions at BRI power plant
Karachi, Pakistan: Chinese state-owned enterprises operating flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure projects are enforcing Beijing's harsh COVID-19 restrictions across Asian and African countries where they are putting employees in lockdown and even separating them from their family members, media reports said.
The latest flashpoint is Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, where hundreds of workers have been ordered not to leave a multi-billion-dollar power plant without permission since March 2020, reports ABC News.
The Pakistan Army's assistance has been taken to enforce the restrictions.
"We are not allowed to go home, meet with our loved ones, celebrate our religious or cultural festivals or pursue further education," Yusuf (name changed), a Pakistani engineer who is working on the project, told ABC News.
"Many of us had developed suicidal thoughts, and we are treated like prisoners."
"We have no freedom in our own country," he said.
The policy is so strictly enforced, the company operating the plant has been unable to hire any local doctors to live on-site to treat sick workers because Pakistani doctors are unwilling to accept the restrictions.
A local branch of PowerChina — the world's biggest power construction company, with more than 80 subsidiaries around the globe — operates the plant, ABS News reported.
In Australia, PowerChina owns and operates the Castle Hill Wind Farm in Tasmania.
The company, in a letter to Pakistan's National Electric Power Regulatory Authority, admitted "the management of the project immediately carried out the lockdown in the plant since March 2020", but said that it allowed the employees "to enter or leave the plant for regular holidays all the time".
It explained: "Lockdown is the most-effective measure to ensure the situation [is] always under control but with the lowest cost."
Zhao Tao, a director of the administration department for PowerChina's local subsidiary, told ABC the company had given workers extra bonuses for staying inside.
"We are implementing the zero-COVID policy for the health of our workers," Zhao said.
He said another coal-fired power plant operated by a Chinese company in Pakistan was also in lockdown, and this was not unusual.
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