Munda Dam faces bottlenecks

ISLAMABAD: At a time when the country is facing power outages, the approval of Munda Dam with capacity of 800 megawatt cheap electricity, is stuck up from last two years only because of bureaucratic hurdles, official documents available with The News disclosed on Sunday.
The official documents show that the feasibility study of this project was done by Jica in year 2000 and Pakistan Power Infrastructure Board (PPIB) assigned it to a private party Amzo in 2004 but it never took off. After this failure, Wapda was assigned the task to undertake this project in 2008.
The PC-II for consultancy and allied works amounting to Rs652 million was approved by the Central Development Working Party (CDWP) on 11/10/2008. Subsequently, after competitive bidding, a consortium of International & local Consultants viz. SMEC of Australia (lead firm), Nippon Koe - Japan, Nespak, ACE, EGC and Bak as local partners was appointed by Wapda, for review of earlier feasibility & to carry out detailed design at a cost of Rs611 million. Total revised cost of PC-II which included cost of investigations as well worked out at Rs1,246 million.
Work commenced in 2012 and was scheduled to be completed by May 2014. Up to 60% design work has been completed. The work on design has remained suspended for over 18 months due to delay in approval of revised PC-II by Planning Division resulting in non-payments to consultants since May, 2013.
As the cost had increased due to delays since 2008, Wapda submitted a revised PC-II for Rs1246 million. Planning Division recommended the revised P.C II to CDWP in March 2012. CDWP recommended this revised PC-II at a cost of Rs1,246 million to ECNEC for approval. Chairman ECNEC accorded an interim approval of Rs. 400 million on 21-03-2012 to start the work.
As the approval of revised PC II did not come forth and was delayed, Wapda stopped payments to the Consultants from May 2013. Accordingly work slowed down in 2013. Work had to be completely suspended in June 2014 after outstanding dues to Consultants amounted to around Rs300 million.
Work remains suspended to-date (November-2015).
When contacted to Federal Minister for Planning Ehsan Iqbal on Sunday, he said that they had cleared the project recently with the instruction to WAPDA to recover the cost from consultant. Now there is no delay from their side, he added.
This scribe also sent out question to Chairman Wapda Zafar Mahmmod who replied back by stating that the ministry has referred back the conditional approval to the Planning Commission. Hopefully, it would be cleared soon, he added.
But the official documents read that agreement to fund the cost of Consultancy and allied works was signed between EAD and AFD, France for a loan of Euro 11.0 million on 2-4-2012. AFD has already paid Rs.181 million to WAPDA since early this year which is lying unutilized, attracting interest.
Chairman Wapda sent a confirmatory letter to Secretary Planning Division on 23-02-2015 that as all conditions imposed by CDWP and Planning Division had been fulfilled and EU had released the funds, revised PC II should be approved and Wapda should be allowed to restart work on the project.
On this, the Planning Division came out with new objection that consultants had recommended a wrong PMF (Probable Maximum Flood) therefore, they should be penalized. European Union had also appointed their Consultants to study effects of climate change.
The Consultants recommendations had clearly stated that theirs was a preliminary recommendation to be finalized by WAPDA Committee. Later WAPDA appointed a Committee of Experts to sort out this issue. Based on the Committee report, WAPDA informed Planning Division on 21-05-2015 that there was no mistake in the calculation of PMF by the Mohmand Dam Consultants as determination of PMF depended upon adoption of various factors which vary from designer to designer.
The determination of PMF varied each time this was determined by different experts. Even on this project there were more than 7 different figures recommended by different agencies from time to time. In fact the PMF was calculated by the team of local experts and no expert was involved from SMEC, but SMEC was singled out to be penalized inspite of the fact that it is a J.V of 4 Consultants jointly and severally responsible for all work. Table below shows calculation of PMF determined at different times.
Naseer Gilani, Water Planning Commission chief, keeps on harping that European Union rejected PMF value determined by the Consultants. The fact is that neither European Union is a technical body to determine PMF, nor Consultants appointed by the European Union recommended any firm figure. They left it to WAPDA to determine final value. They also clarified that their recommendations should in no way be taken as recommendations of EU.
Despite reminders sent by WAPDA from time to time, the revised PC II was not approved by the Planning Division for over one and half year period.
The Planning Division on August 24, 2015 cleared the project again imposing new conditions including change of structure of the Consultants Consortium. Wapda has already replied that these conditions are neither legally nor contractually implementable and should be withdrawn. Therefore PC-II still hangs in balance for all practical purposes and work on the project remains suspended so far.
Another meeting was held, chaired by the Minister of Planning few weeks ago, where it was decided to approve the PC-II unconditionally.
Although, decision was taken to approve the revised PC II unconditionally but the Planning Commission has again issued conditional approval on 14thOctober, 2015with the result that work on design of project remains completely suspended since June 2014.
Delay in the project is costing Rs53 billion loss every year to the national economy. Besides, as floods in recent years are more frequent, the lack of the project is contributing to flood damages & loss of life in KP, South Punjab and Sindh. With delay of one and half years, the cost of the project has already gone up by more than Rs25 billion. Even the revised cost of PC-II may go up to more than Rs1200 million, which was forcibly reduced by Planning Division to Rs937 million in 2014.
A hydropower and irrigation project of great importance to the national economy and political importance for FATA area has been practically ignored since 2004. A high powered inquiry should be ordered by PM to for fixing responsibility for such a long delay in execution of this project of great national importance resulting in loss of billions of rupees, on account of additional cost and loss of revenue from power generation and agriculture.