Fund mismanagement in Gwadar desalination plant surfaces

ISLAMABAD: A classic example of mismanagement of development funds has been surfaced even for strategically and economically important location of Gwadar Port City as its first desalination plant of 2 million gallon per day (MGD) water was approved with estimated cost of Rs378 million in 2006 but it never got implemented in last 12 years.

The Gwadar Port City, which is becoming a hub of the economic activities with help of Chinese investment, has been facing acute water shortages so all those should be held responsible who committed negligence for ensuring basic facilities at Gwadar. Sources said Monday Gwadar was facing acute water shortages and at a time when there was no CPEC on horizon, the federal government had approved development scheme for desalination of water of 2MGD for Gwadar with estimated cost of Rs378 million on basis of 50:50 % cost sharing formula by the Center and Balochistan’s provincial government respectively.

The federal government released its funding of Rs138 million but this desalination plant could not be installed. Then the provincial government asked the Center to revise the project cost and provided the whole amount as the provincial government could not undertake this project on cost sharing basis. The cost of this project was revised upward to Rs978 million for installing this water plant in order to provide clean drinking water for Gwadar inhabitants. The Centre released remaining Rs840 million out of total Rs978 million because it had already provided Rs138 million for execution of this project. Despite releasing of the whole allocated amount, the desalination plant of 2MGD had not yet made operational after passing 12 years, said the official sources and added that now third time its cost would be revised upward with latest upsurge in estimated amount of another Rs500 million.

On the other hand, the federal government has included another water scheme for Gwadar into Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) titled “Necessary Facilities of Fresh Water Treatment, Water Supply and Distribution Gwadar (CPEC)” with estimated cost of Rs11.396 billion out of which Rs2 billion were already spent to lay water pipeline from two small dams including Shadikot and Swada dams. Now the Gwadar Port Authority (GDA) has sought additional funding of Rs1452 million to complete pipeline of ensuring provision of water from one dam. These dams are located 67 and over 100 kilometer away from Gwadar and water pumping machines will be installed to ensure availability of clean water. The CDWP has recently approved another 5MGD water desalination plant with estimated cost of Rs5 billion. The GDA authorities argued that the current water requirement for Gwadar stood at six million gallons per day and currently there was no direct water supply taking place to the area. Two MGD water is being supplied from two water small dams through tankers. “We have a deficit of four million gallon per day in the water supply to the area,” they added. By 2020 the water requirement of Gwadar would be touching 12 million gallons per day for which additional arrangements were made to get 10 million gallons of water.

The GDA with the help of federal and Balochistan governments is laying a pipeline from two dams. Total capacity of the dams will be 5MGD and it is hoped that the supply will be started by March 2018, they hoped but all will depend on completion of one water pipe scheme and pouring of rains in next couple of months.