HARIPUR, Feb 10: The Ghazi Barotha Hydel Power Project (GBHPP) is likely to start electricity production as Wapda authorities have decided to release water in the main power channel on Thursday, sources told Dawn here on Tuesday.

The power channel was closed on Jan 18 when the Wapda authorities detected damages in the bed and sides of channel at certain points and accused the Ghazi Barotha Contractors (GBC), a consortium of national and multi-national construction firms, of using substandard material.

Wapda also asked the GBC, headed by Italian company Impregelo, to carry out repair work under defect liability period conditions, which was effective till May 31, 2004.

The GBC, which constructed the 52-km-long and 40-ft-wide power channel of GBHPP, refused to accept the responsibility for the damages and held the Pakistan Hydro Consultants (PHC) responsible for giving faulty design.

Wapda, PHC and GBC agreed to jointly determine the factual position through their experts by suspending power generation. The trio's experts, after emptying the channel, inspected the affected points and submitted the findings to Wapda authorities in Lahore to fix the responsibility.

The final decision was expected during next couple of days, the sources said. Meanwhile, the GBC under the defect liability period conditions carried out seven major and a number of small repairs in the power channel from zero to point 40 and gave a go-ahead signal to the GBHPP authorities for releasing water into the channel and resuming electricity generation from Feb 12.

The $2 billion GBHPP, the third biggest hydropower generation project in the country in public sector, has 1450 MW power generation capacity and was producing 1160 MW till Jan 18 with four units, each of 290 MW, operating while the fifth one was expected to be made operational by the end of June this year.