http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/June-2003/19/EDITOR/op4.asp
EAS BOKHARI
A visit to Wah Ordnance Factories is education as the outfit is not just a public sector defence hardware churning machine, it is much more than that. POF is a multifaceted institution, where besides the interaction between explosives and fabrication of guns one comes across a score of other more humane activities. Of late there has been an extensive face lifting of the cantonment, and a number of human development and welfare projects have come up. In fact the very look of the place is more human than militaristic.
I had visited POFs sporadically and the first time I went there was many years ago due to a sponsorship of ISPR (late Gen Riaz Ullah) with a team of journalists though I don’t claim to be one myself. We were then conducted round the place by the POF PRO Mr Saeed a bulky or I should say an unwieldy pan-chewing Urdu-speaking literary figure. I thought he was more at home with poetry than pyrotechnics, gun powder and the art of gun foundry. But I suppose he liked it at that way. This was way back in 1986.
And after that due to some reasons not quite known to me, this world-wide scientific interaction and my visits to Wah truncated till I was invited by Gen Qayyum HI (M) this week to visit Wah. It was indeed gracious of him to do so.
Between Gulf War I in January 1991 and Gulf War II, POF seems to have completely changed and there I could see signs of tremendous progress and innovation in every sphere of the working of the institution including eye catching civil works, neatly laid roads and green belts, a very creditable export business, welfare technical and human development projects, the centre piece being the IT and computer science projects. The whole atmosphere appeared to be confidence-giving. The transformation appeared to be simply stunning. I was impressed to learn later that the POF have their own R&D outfit which carries out what I can term as ‘functional’ R&D, as no basic research can be carried out by a small staff with inadequate funding.
I had a rather hurried run through the factories which are well laid out and have no environmental problems. It was good to see that even the old British provided machines in the factory are kept in good working order. I was shown the delicate fuse shops where women were working and at one shop ‘two-rupee’ coins are fabricated for the Pakistan mint. The profitable commercial outlets were encouraging to see. The profit is ploughed into welfare schemes.
During discussion with Gen Qayyum, he told me he was worried about the congestion of the defence production assets and was trying for a dispersed proliferation of such assets, and as it is, Sanjwal, Gadwal and Havelian are away from the main POF complex in Wah Cantt. Interestingly most public sector defence production assets are located in what I call the ‘Iron Trapezium’ Chaklala, Havelian, Kamra, Sanjwal, Wah. This has some benefits but some strategic disadvantage too in the long run.
We might note that the Indian defence production assets are widely dispersed e.g. their heavy vehicle/tanks are built at Avadi, South India, missiles are fabricated at Bangalore, Mazagaon is their main ship building centre with their chemical weapons done up at Bhopal and one of their biggest Ordnance Depot is at Panagarh near Calcutta.
It is interesting that our main thrust in defence production is in the public sector whereas all world leaders in this activity are in the private sector. The General told me that we did not have the expertise and dedication in the civil sector, once that was built up, he would gladly hand over the POF to the private sector.
I put up the point of private ballistic range to be established at Wah but I was told that there is no requirement as we do not work on any weapon system ab initio, and we have to follow the acquired military technology as best as we can. All the same, I am still of the view that it would be good if we have that capability as there can always be a technology suffocation and a contingency plan should always be there. Of course such ranges are expensive to install and run.
While we were departing the Gen pointed out to me the portraits of the twelve POF chairmen (including him). This is interestingly a polyglot lot, one of them the first one Mr Ghulam Farooq Khan was a civilian and present one is a missile and gunnery expert. What a diverse expertise is needed for this very important job. The job has been mostly held by EME officers including Brigadier WD Arshad who was my course mate, and even by an ASC officer. But I suppose a gunner can be best attuned to the problems of powder, propellants and projectile ballistics.
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