'Country faced multibillion losses due to Wapda's incompetency'

The country has faced multibillion rupee financial losses in the wake of incompetence of Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) over the past many years. This was stated by Federal Secretary of the Ministry of Water and Power, Younas Dhaga while briefing the subcommittee of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) here on Tuesday, which met under the chairmanship of Sardar Ashiq Hussain Gopang.
"Frankly speaking I will fail to explain and defend the volume of misappropriations and irregularities in WAPDA even if I am granted another life," he said, adding this happened due to lack of accountability mechanism in the public sector organisations. Dhaga said, "In Rainee Canal Project Guddu, the entire transaction was not transparent and billions of rupees were misappropriated by the officials of the WAPDA in collaboration with the contractors."
The committee while reviewing the audit objections of the WAPDA was informed by the principal accounting officer (PAO) that in every segment of the Rainee Canal Project, Guddu, which was started in 2004-05, massive irregularities were committed, as a result the country faced financial losses of billions of rupees. Gopang asked the officials of the WAPDA why there was no check and balance in the aforementioned project, as national kitty faced loss of Rs 3.056 billion in only 1 project. The committee directed the secretary to conduct a viable inquiry into the matter pertaining to massive irregularities in Rainee Canal Project with fixing the responsibility and present the inquiry report before the panel.
The convenor of the committee said that after the report of the inquiry committee "We will decide to send the issue to National Accountability Bureau (NAB) or Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to fix the responsible persons." The committee also directed the PAO to inquire into the matter of non-transparency in the award of a contract of Rs 2.44 billion by ignoring lowest bidder in Rainee Canal Project of the WAPDA. According to the audit report, a loss of Rs 2.34 billion was incurred to national kitty at Rainee Canal Project at Guddu as a result of extra expenditure due to non-inclusion of "risk and cost" clause in the contract. The contract was awarded to SH Haq Noor & Co in 2004-05 to complete the project in 2007, but the contractor failed to complete the work due to slow speed, and in 2007 the contractor died. Following which the WAPDA re-tendered the contract and completed the project at a cost of Rs 4.33 billion against original estimated cost of Rs 1.99 billion.
Dagha said that his ministry is not in a position to defend the irregularities pointed out in Rainee Canal Project by the audit officials and requested the convener committee to give him 2 months time for conducting an inquiry into the whole issue so that responsibility can be fixed. The panel accepted his request with directions to share the findings of the inquiry with the PAC Secretariat.
The participants were surprised to know that a grade-16 official of Karachi City District Government namely Shams-ul-Haq Siddiqui fraudulently availed deputation as director public relation (post of BPS-19) in Chief Resident Representative Karachi for a period of 3 years from 2006-09 and in Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (HESCO) for 6 months from February 18, 2009 to July 13, 2009 on fake documents and caused Rs 3 million loss to the national kitty.
The PAO informed the committee that the individual was arrested and jailed where after spending 1 year, he got bailed from the court and the case is still in the court. In another case of corruption, the committee was informed that a senior storekeeper of the HESCO misplaced material worth of Rs 8 million, but the HESCO instead of taking stern action against the person, adopted a unique method of recovery with fining him Rs 3,000 per month penalty. The committee was further informed that official Zaheer-ul-Islam went to the court against the HESCO decision. Replying to the above case, the PAO said that the recovery of Rs 8 million is not possible with current penalty if the official involved gets another life.