October 07, 2006	Saturday	Ramazan 13, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 6: Several major development projects in the water and power sector are unlikely to be completed on schedule due to Wapda’s failure to acquire land on time and finalise resettlements plans for people to be affected by the projects.

Informed sources told Dawn, that Wapda authorities had not been able to acquire land and work out resettlement plans for the Diamer Basha dam and Kalabagh and Akhori dams. The engineering design and tender documents for the Akhori dam were also still to be completed.

The government had directed Wapda to hold detailed discussion about the projects with civil society organisations. It asked Wapda to prepare a database about the living standard of the people of the area.

Wapda officials were asked to work out a plan for land acquisition and resettlement so that the projects could be completed on schedule.

The authority was advised by the Planning Commission to create a media cell for interaction with the public and the press to highlight the issues related to the development of power and power resources.

The commission also called for creating an environmental cell in Wapda or a subsidiary organisation of Wapda to conduct studies in accordance with international standards and to prepare environmental guidelines.

The Planning Commission in a meeting held on September 9 also observed that Wapda officials were presenting for approval of duplicate power projects. In this regard, a power distribution enhancement project was particularly discussed, the purpose of which was to set up a sound power distribution system to ensure adequate and stable power supply for sustained economic growth in the country.

It said: “There were duplication in scope of the proposed projects and that of power distribution enhancement sub-projects to be implemented by the same agency –- the Peshawar Electric Power Company.”

Furthermore, most of the tasks included in the scope of the work — preparation of environmental and social impact study project – documents’ technical designs had already been completed by almost all distribution companies (Discos) to be implemented during 2006-2010.

The government had already approved these projects for implementation. Real needs of distribution companies were institutional capacity building in environmental and social-impact assessment, international procurement, supply-demand, etc.