Wah Cantonment

Wah Cantt is located approximately 50 km northwest of Islamabad City. Wah Cantt is located in a valley which is surrounded by hills from all directions. Wah Cantonment is a multicultural city including people from every corner of the Pakistan that are serving here. Most of these are away from their home with one mission and that is to serve the country by strengthening its defense capability. This has been the case since 1951, when the Prime Minster at the time, Khawaja Nazam-u-Din, unveiled the stone of Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF), a military complex of 14 factories. Chaudhry Sardar Khan was the founder and first Deputy Director General of Pakistan Ordnamce Factories, Wah.

History

Wah had been one of the favorite places for the Mughal Rulers. They once built here a garden known as Wah Garden which is still present with its remains, located on main G.T Road. This garden was a very beautiful and charming place. Wah Cantt is adjacent to Taxila City, which is enriched with one of the most important archaeological sites of the world. The ancient name of Taxial was 'Takshasila' means the "city of cut stones". Taxila had been the cradle of the world’s greatest civilization. It is the place where Ghandhara Civilization and sculpture art took roots and flourished. Taxila was conquered by Alexander in 327 BC. It later came under the Mauryan dynasty and attained a remarkably mature level of development under the great Atoka. Then appeared the Indo-Greek descendants of Alexander’s warriors and finally came he most creative period of Gandhara. The great Kushan dynasty was established somewhere near 50 AD. During the next 200 years, Taxila became a renowned center of learning, philosophy and art. Pilgrims and travelers were attracted to it from as far away as China and Greece.

Culture

Wah Cantt is a multicultural City. People from every corner of the Pakistan are serving here. They all are away from their home with a mission; and that mission is just to make Pakistan strong. You may observe here culture of every region from Karachi to Khyber. People are very cooperative and literate and most of them are factory employees. The city is rather quite in the morning, but all charm of the city is restored in the evening. Every facility of life is available at everyone’s door step and the environment is peaceful and pleasant, not to mention extremely clean, something unlike most places in Pakistan.

Defense

The Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF), is responsible for conventional weapons production and is located in Wah Cantonnement. POF is a government organization operating under the Defense Production Division in Pakistan’s Ministry of Defense. POF is a complex of arms and ammunition manufacturing factories employing more than 40,000 personnel. POF has provided weapons and ammunitions to the Pakistan Army and all their foreign clients. However, since POF can not produce the complete inventory of the Pakistani Army's armament needs, a high content of the Armed Force requirements are imported. POF produces approximately 70 major products for supply of Army, Navy and Air Force. The main products include automatic rifle; light medium and heavy machine guns, complete range of mortar and artillery ammunitions, aircraft ammunition and anti-aircraft ammunitions, tank ammunition and anti-tank ammunitions, bombs, grenades, land mines, pyrotechnics and signal stores etc.