PESHAWAR: Hydroelectric profit in line with Kazi formula urged
Bureau Report
PESHAWAR, Jan 11: Speakers at a seminar demanded of the federal government and Wapda to ensure regular and full payment of the annual hydroelectric profit share to the NWFP in accordance with the A.G.N. Kazi Committee’s recommendations and the projections reflected in the 5th National Finance Commission (NFC) award.
Leaders of the People’s Party Parliamentarians and the Awami National Party, making presentations at the seminar “net hydel power profit and Frontier’s economy”, organized by the Peshawar Press Club on Saturday, accused the successive Wapda managements of violating NWFP’s constitutional right by not making full payment of the net hydel power profit share determined by the Kazi committee.
For the resolution of the NWFP grievances, they said, it was imperative that Wapda headquarters be shifted from Lahore to Islamabad. It would also help the federal government to control its establishment cost.
“Wapda headquarters need to be shifted from Lahore to Islamabad in the larger interest of the NWFP, which generates one-third of the total electricity generated in the country through hydel power and thermal generation units,” said PPP parliamentary party leader in the NWFP Assembly Abdul Akbar Khan.
In this context, he maintained that the government had shifted the Naval headquarters from Karachi to Islamabad, but it was reluctant to shift Wapda’s headquarters to Islamabad.
“If naval headquarters could be shifted far away from the coast why not Wapda’s headquarters at the federal capital,” he said.
Awami National Party information secretary Haji Mohammad Adeel also spoke at length on the unjust treatment meted out to the NWFP people at the hands of bureaucracy and Wapda.
Akbar Khan, who is a former speaker of the NWFP Assembly, said it was the constitutional right of the province to get its share in accordance with the A.G.N. Qazi formula, devised by the Council of Common Interest (CCI) in 1987. But, neither the federal government nor Wapda management was ready to implement it, he added.
He said: “It is their collective problem irrespective of who is in the government and who in the opposition. We want Wapda to give us Rs334 billion, outstanding on net profit of electricity.” It was the major source of provincial income which had been given a protection in Article 161 (2) and Article 154 (1) of the Constitution but the government was not ready to constitute the CCI to take up the issue afresh, he added.
The Frontier, he said, was not responsible for the line losses as it had nothing to do with the transmission of electricity. “We generate over 15,000 megawatt hours from Tarbela Dam, Warsak Dam and four other small units out of total 36,130 megawatt, which is 44 per cent of the total generation,” he added.
Haji Adeel, who is a former deputy speaker of the NWFP Assembly, said ANP founding president Khan Abdul Wali Khan had signed the 1973 Constitution, when the then government had incorporated the Article 161 into the Constitution and protected the right of the province on generation of the electricity.
He said successive governments delayed the constitution of the CCI for 18 long years, and the NWFP could not get its just right till 1990-91 financial year.
He also explained in detail the formation of the Kazi committee which had determined the net profit in its famous formula in 1987. “The Punjab bureaucracy is not ready to accept it as it was the main source of provincial income,” he added.
