LAHORE, July 14: The project audit (PA) of the Rainee Canal on Monday pointed out over Rs175 million bungling in the project which is hardly at the take-off stage.

According to the report, the most serious violation of the rules has been committed by the General Manager of Wapda (Project) North who, after awarding the contract, changed the site of excavation on the request of the contractor and caused Rs629,9145 loss. According to the PA, the GM changed the site from RD-03+86 to RD23+546 (for which tender was called) to RD-18 to RD-38 on the request of the contractor because the tender site was difficult one due to standing water and jungle.

The contractor did not reduce the price for getting easy work; similar work at Kachi canal is being carried out at a much reduced cost. Due to change of the site, the Authority incurred a loss of Rs629,9145. The audit stressed “the loss either be made good from the contractor or officer held responsible.”

The audit also pointed out that Rs138 million were kept by the Authority for detailed engineering studies and tender documents. The schedule time for the preparation of studies and documents has expired and no fruitful report had been produced nor given to the audit.

Another glaring irregularity pointed out by the audit is that of Rs34 million given to the District Management, Ghotki, for payments to land holders. Under the law, the project director is bound to supply copies of orders sanctioning payments of compensation but he did not produce the record. The audit’s doubts that all this amount has been misappropriated stem from the fact that there is no record of trees and houses on the canal route and payments have been made against fictitious claims. On top of it, there are no rules/orders of Wapda, under which these payments were being made.

The audit also claimed that response of the project director in this regard was not correct. The audit took a strong exception to the bungling and converted it into a draft para, skipping two stages — audit para and advance para — which will not be referred to the Authority and directly taken up by the Public Accounts Committee.

The audit also pointed out that payment of Rs478,100 made to the Friends Engineering (beneficiary of the site change) for a part arrangement of the ground-breaking ceremony in spite of the fact that ceremony was underwritten by provincial and district government. The same company received another Rs6.44 million against all financial rules and regulations.

Another Rs0.43 million, the report said, were made against another fictitious claim for items supplied at the time of the inaugural ceremony. The said items were never supplied. Another Rs1.5 million were for the construction of a railways bridge which has not been constructed yet. In addition to above-mentioned major heads, the audit also pointed out smaller lapses like irregular payments of Rs16,526 to daily wagers, missing air-conditioners worth Rs230,000 and Rs230,000 on LD charges.