‘Contractors misused payments in clean drinking water project’

PESHAWAR: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has claimed that contractors misused the mobilisation advance payments and installed only a small number of water filtration plants under the ‘Clean Drinking Water for All’ project.

It accused them of causing loss of millions of rupees to the exchequer. As per the NAB Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the contract of the project Clean Drinking Water for All was awarded to M/S Ideal Hydrotech System in November 2007 for installation of 1,159 water filtration plants costing Rs2.5 billion in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, tribal districts and Gilgit-Baltistan (formerly Northern Areas).

As per the initial information, the NAB claimed that M/S Ideal Hydrotech System entered into a joint venture and formed a new company, M/S Ideal Hydrotech System Pakistan Limited (IHSPAL) and provided conditional bank guarantees on which huge sums of around Rs800 million was released as mobilisation advance payments and about 250 pumps were installed. According to NAB, the pumps weren’t in the category specified in the contract.

"The contractors managed to misroute the mobilisation advance payments and installed only a small number of water filtration plants," official sources said. Due to the alleged misrouting of mobilisation advance payments, meant for the effectiveness of the mobilization advance bank guarantee, the project was badly affected and the work wasn’t executed as per the contract agreement. The sources said this resulted in the loss of hundreds of millions of rupees to the exchequer and deprived a big segment of the society of clean drinking water. They said the inability to provide safe drinking water to citizens meant exposing them to risk to their health.

The NAB KP on November 8 arrested two persons, including chief executive of a firm, for alleged embezzlement of funds in Clean Drinking Water for All project. They were charged with inflicting loss of millions of rupees to the exchequer. The NAB KP obtained 11 days physical remand of the two suspects, chief executive officer of M/S Ideal Hydrotech Systems

Pakistan Ltd Mohammad Ramazan and a senior government official, Asghar Khan. It claimed that Mohammad Ramazan in connivance with the co-accused gave fake bank guarantees and illegally secured mobilisation advance for execution of the project.

The NAB KP said Asghar Khan was chief engineer in the local government department and remained deputy project director for the project. The project was started by the Ministry of Industries and Commerce across the country in 2006 to install filtration plants in different localities. It was approved by the Central Development Working Party to install one water filtration plant in every union council in KP, erstwhile Fata and Gilgit-Baltistan.