LAHORE, July 7: The Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) has recovered around Rs10 billion arrears from the public sector, says Chairman Zulfiqar Ali Khan.

He was talking to reporters after a lecture on ‘engineering management’ arranged by the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Pakistan (IEEEP), here on Monday.

Out of the remaining public sector default of Rs34 billion, Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) owe Rs26.5 billion and Rs3.5 billion, respectively.

According to Mr Khan, the recovery of Rs 10billion has enabled the authority to start the new fiscal year with positive cash flow. At the beginning of the last fiscal, Wapda was in a deficit of Rs10 billion but it managed to clear all its liabilities to the oil and gas companies and independent power producers (IPPs).

The chairman claimed that the authority had achieved its revenue target of Rs216 billion for the year. It was largely because of more than 100 per cent recovery from the private sector and late cash flows from public sector.

According to him, gas companies had not been providing requisite supplies to Wapda. He rejected a gas companies’ claim that authority demanded heavy supplies during winter, the peak season, and refused to receive gas in summer when enough supplies were available. The chairman claimed that the authority was ready to enter into an agreement with the gas companies for consistent gas supplies throughout the year.

Speaking at the IEEEP lecture earlier, the chairman said that engineering profession had suffered because of lack of management training. “Engineers do not usually build up on their skills. They keep climbing up the official ladder but do not expand their knowledge base in spite of the fact that complexity of problems increases with every promotion.” This, he said, was crux of the problem.

Dr Zahoor Hassan, vice-chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), said that decision-making process had suffered badly due to lack of engineering management skills at the national level.

Mr Ali Sajjad of the NUST was of the view that lack of management skills among engineers were costing Rs3 trillion annually to the country. “The figure assumes added significance taken in the backdrop of total national foreign debt. If engineers could save the amount being wasted due to mismanagement, the country could get out of debt trap in a year-and-a-half,” he claimed.