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PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak accepted on Tuesday the resignation of the chairman of the board of directors (BoD) of Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organisation (Pedo) — submitted two months ago — a day before the latter was to order inquiries into a loss of millions of rupees caused to the provincial exchequer and appointments made on political grounds.
The acceptance of the resignation of Shakeel Durrani — the former chief secretary of KP and ex-chairman of Wapda — comes three months after director general of the KP Ehtesab Commission retired Gen Mohammad Hamid Khan quit, accusing the government of diluting his powers and making the accountability process redundant.
Another former chief secretary, Shehzad Arbab, resigned in April 2014, citing “wide chasm between the declared policy and practice”.
Shakeel Durrani said he had submitted his resignation after no corrective measures had been taken to redress “incompetence, lack of systems and a dysfunctional organisational structure” in Pedo.
However, he said, he continued to work and convened a meeting of the BoD on Wednesday to discuss and order two inquiries into the loss of Rs40 million per month caused to the exchequer because of non-completion of work on the transmission line of Machai and Ranolia projects.
The projects launched by the then Awami National Party government and completed in July 2015, at exorbitant costs, are not generating electricity because of the absence of transmission lines.
Mr Durrani claimed that he wanted to order an inquiry into the extension of deadline for completing the project and payment of an additional Rs700m to the contractor without the board’s approval, besides ordering a scrutiny of all appointments of personnel from the private sector in Pedo and their salary packages.
“The agenda for the board meeting had been circulated and those items were to be discussed and decided in Wednesday’s meeting when my resignation, submitted two months ago, was abruptly accepted, just a day earlier,” he told Dawn.
Mr Durrani, whose job as chairman of the BoD was only honorary, said he had written to the chief minister twice — a letter two months ago and the other about two weeks ago, seeking his attention to resolve the lingering issues.
During his six months as the BoD chairman, he wrote to the CM, saying he had found “incompetence, lack of effective systems and a dysfunctional organisational structure in Pedo” compounded by “near total disinterest” by Minister for Energy Mohammad Atif and Pedo Chief Executive Akbar Ayub to improve matters.
“They wanted to retain arbitrary control of the organisation,” he alleged.
Power projects
“The result is that after three years in office, the incumbent government has not completed even one hydropower project,” he said.
“The press conference held by the minister on June 20 was a figment of his imagination when he claimed that 400MW have been added to the national grid,” Mr Durrani said. “Not a single megawatt has been added (to the national grid) by this government,” he added.
“Power generation during this government’s tenure has gone down by four megawatts [instead],” the former chairman of Wapda said.
The government was more interested in constructing 350 micro hydel projects than building large projects, he said.
“The cost of a micro project is Rs2.4m but the government spent Rs5m on a helicopter round trip to inaugurate a project and advertisement about the project,” he said. “This is ridiculous. Power projects are the future of this province.”
Referring to a study, he said, 80 per cent of the micro hydel projects built over the past 10 years in KP, Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan were not operational because of heavy salinity, lack of maintenance and non-payment of bills.
Mr Durrani said that the BoD also wanted to discuss and re-evaluate the financial and social costs and benefits of micro hydel stations through an Asian Development Bank loan of $300m.
“The loan amount is equal to the equity of Munda-Mohmand Dam, which can generate 840MW, a little less than 1,000MW being generated by the Manga Dam,” he said.
He alleged that the minister and the Pedo CEO had desperately tried to avoid the inquiry into the non-commissioning of the two projects.
Inductions into Pedo
Mr Durrani also alleged that Pedo had become an organisation where the CEO, the chief financial officer (CFO) and some newly inducted non-engineering personnel were selected on a whim from the private sector and were operating in a virtual non-system.
He said that a candidate seeking the position of CEO must hold an engineering degree and the post must be advertised as such but the advertisement was withdrawn and the requirement of an engineering degree was replaced with a general degree to accommodate Akbar Ayub, who was sponsored by Asad Umar, a senior leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, because of their connection with Engro.
The CEO, he said, was receiving a monthly salary of Rs1.4m but wanted it raised to Rs1.8m whereas the new CFO and the Human Resources personnel were reportedly being paid between Rs600,000 and Rs800,000 per month.
“Wapda chairman receives about Rs600,000 per month and each member of the authority around Rs300,000. Wapda is a hundred times larger organisation than Pedo,” Mr Durrani said in his resignation letter.
“The immense differential between the newly appointed personnel from private sector and those already working in Pedo is causing heart burn and paralysis in the working of the organisation. The senior engineers and staff do not have a working relationship with the CEO,” he said.
“No wonder Pedo has nothing to show for itself over the last three years, including the one and a half years under the new management,” he added.
“No new power generation project has been commissioned because of mismanagement and delayed decision-making. Some projects launched over three years ago are stuck up for different reasons,” he said.
Mr Durrani said the CM, the minister for power and the CEO were not sharing details of the bids received for six new independent power projects, whatever the purpose.
He said he doubted Pedo and its consultants had evaluated and selected the bids in a fair and objective way.
“With the present dysfunctional structure and poor systems and the inability of Pedo to rectify matters I do not see much hope for the future,” he said.
Minister’s reaction
Mohammad Atif rejected the allegations and said that Mr Durrani, being a retired bureaucrat, wanted to run Pedo like a government department whereas he wanted to run it in a corporate atmosphere, where decisions were taken in an efficient manner and pay packages were high.
Mr Atif did not deny Mr Ayub’s association with Asad Omar or Engro and retorted that by the same yardstick Mr Durrani was Imran Khan’s friend. The minister said that he had policy differences with Mr Durrani, including the development of micro hydel projects.
He clarified that an additional amount of Rs700m had been paid to the contractor because of cost escalation caused by a delay in the project completion.
Published in Dawn, June 23rd, 2016
