Snubbing the officials of the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP), a parliamentary panel Friday directed that the AGP must not waste national resources on making irrelevant audit paras. The subcommittee of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which met with Syed Naveed Qamar in the chair, discussed audit paras of the Ministry of Energy (Power Division). The committee expressed serious anger over the AGP officials for objecting to early completion of Tarbella 4th extension project with low cost.
The committee observed if any department of the state is saving national resources and completing any project before time with low cost, it should be appreciated rather raising objections to it. Briefing the participants, Chairman Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA), Muzzammil Hussain said that Tarbella 4th Extension Hydropower Project is complete, and its annual energy generation is expected to reach 3.84 billion units during the current calendar year, subject to the availability of water.
He further said that after the completion of the project, the World Bank has written a letter of appreciation to Pakistan for early and below the cost completing the project. The WAPDA said that the World Bank and the International Panel of Experts (IPOE) appreciated the successful completion and effective operation of the Tarbella Fourth Extension Hydropower project commissioned last year in a phased manner.
The IPOE expressed satisfaction over the functioning of various components of the project, including civil works and electro-mechanical equipments. It was noted that the project is functioning as per the designed specification. The 1,410 megawatts of Tarbella 4th extension hydropower project was constructed on tunnel number 4 of Tarbella dam, the world's largest earth-filled reservoir on Indus River in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he said.
He said that the project has three generating units, each of them having capacity of 470 megawatts. The project has been envisaged to provide 3.84 billion units of electricity on an average per annum to the grid. Annual benefits of the project have been estimated at Rs 30 billion. "With completion of Tarbella 4th extension hydropower project, the installed capacity of Tarbella hydropower station has increased to 4,888MW from 3,478MW," he maintained.
He said Tarbella 4th extension was a component of least-cost energy generation plan being implemented by Wapda on priority to meet electricity requirements in the country and increase the ratio of hydroelectricity in the national grid to stabilise electricity tariff for the consumers. He said the WAPDA has added 2487 MW hydel electricity to the national grid station since September 2017. The projects which were completed during the last two years included 969 MW Neelum-Jhelum, Tarbella 4th Extension, Golan Gol and Kacchi Canal projects, he said. He said recently completed hydel projects would generate Rs 86 billion.
The chairman also clarified that Neelum-Jhelum project has been completed with total cost of Rs 464 billion instead of Rs 503 billion. The cost of the project jumped due to redesigning, he said. He said PC-1 approval for any project took around 26 months which needs to be expedited. The chairman also sough help of committee in filling vacant posts of members water and power in the authority.