ISLAMABAD, Oct 15: Water and Power Development Authority is expected to seek a review of the award of Justice Ajmal Mian-led arbitration tribunal on the contention that the tribunal had gone outside its terms of reference in the final award envisaging Rs110 billion additional payments to the NWFP.
The utility is also likely to seek the intervention of the Council of Common Interest (CCI) through the federal government to scrap the A.G.N. Kazi formula on the ground that its financial snowballing impacts would not be bearable, not only for Wapda but for the nation as a whole.
Sources said that Water and Power Minister Liaquat Ali Jatoi had held a meeting with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz a few days ago and discussed the award announced by a five-member arbitration tribunal and as to how it could be implemented. The minister then visited Lahore to discuss the situation arising out of the arbitration with Wapda’s top brass and its expected impact on utility’s finances and resultant consumer tariffs.
The sources said the minister asked Wapda, perhaps under instruction from the prime minister, to examine in consultation with legal experts each and every point discussed by the chairman of the tribunal in his main award and comments of various members of the tribunal and then get back to the centre for further deliberations.
“As the minister flew immediately to Lahore after calling on the prime minister and presided over a meeting with Wapda on the subject, we assume that we have the prime minister’s support on the subject to protect rights of the utility and its consumers,” a Wapda official told Dawn on telephone.
The official, who closely works with the utility’s legal team, said the award of the tribunal was binding under the TOR but if a party felt that the judgement was outside the TOR, not only a review could be sought but it could also be challenged to that extent.
He said even without calling into question the award’s applicability, Wapda had the right to demand to do away with the Kazi formula and since the forum of CCI was currently fully functional, the matter could be taken up swiftly. In that case, the effectiveness of the Kazi formula could be changed when its true effects were brought before the four federating units.
Wapda’s two members of the tribunal had questioned the workability of the A.G.N. Kazi formula and one of them had written that the tribunal’s award was outside the TOR. He said Wapda’s legal team would take time to prepare the legal case but legal points would remain more or less the same as raised by Jawaid Akhtar and Manzoor A. Sheikh, Wadpa’s members to the tribunal. Mr Sheikh in his separate note to the main report prepared by Justice Ajmal Mian had stated that “the methodology used in the main report, therefore, is not in compliance with the Terms of Reference”.
He had also noted a point that implementation of the Kazi formula would discourage construction of five new proposed mega dams, including Kalabagh dam and Bhasha dam, and the consumers would continue to suffer.
Mr Akhtar had pointed out that “the tribunal concluded that Kazi committee formula was simply not workable” as it could not determine the amount payable under that formula but under a separate formula put in place as ad hoc measure by a committee of the national finance commission.
