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Senate committee criticises WAPDA chairman

Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) Chairman Tariq Hameed came under fire in the Senate Standing Committee on Water and Power for awarding the Mangla Dam Upraising Project (MDUP) to a company against the advice of professional consultants who were paid millions of rupees.

The meeting of the committee was held at Parliament House under the chairmanship of Senator Hafiz Abdul Malik Qadri to review the award of MDUP.

Senator Abdullah Riar of Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP), who attended the meeting as mover of the issue, claimed that the MDUP was awarded to CWE Joint Ventures, the lowest bidders against the consultant-recommended second-highest bidders, Mangla Consultant Joint Ventures, just to oblige a former minister and a close friend of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Abdul Razzaq Dawood.

“Dawood has 30 percent shares in the company,” he claimed.

The committee took strong notice of setting aside the report of the NESPAK and international consultants and formation of a four-member committee comprising WAPDA officials just to endorse the mentioned company.

The committee supported Riar’s viewpoint in response to which the WAPDA chairman tried to convince them that the project was awarded to the lowest bidder in a transparent manner. “The consultants warned WAPDA that if the CWE JV project was approved it would cause potential damage to the main spill ways and the dam itself,” he said. He read out the recommendations of the consultants stating that in most respect the submission and response received from the Mangla Conslatant Joint Ventures was good whereas response from the CWE JV of contract was average to poor.

He also pointed out the misrepresentation to the committee by the chairman that some consultants were also included in the review committee against the facts that all the four members were WAPDA officials. Mr Riar also claimed that the CWE JV got pre-qualification fraudulently citing the completion of Tongjiezi Hydro Power Project in China whereas Sinohydro another bidding company claimed that said project was completed by them.

The fact was later established upon which CWE JV should have been automatically disqualified for providing wrong information to the committee, Riar claimed.

Riar stressed that the matter should be investigated and responsibility fixed as this whole process was dubious. “Billions of rupees of public exchequers is involved in this project and WAPDA should not be allowed to play havoc with it,” he said. He said that there should be some strict mechanism for monitoring WAPDA projects as the main chunk in the PSDP allocations was reserved for projects.

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