NTDC may hire new MD soon

LAHORE: Headless National Transmission & Desptach Company (NTDC) might eventually have an acting managing director (MD) after a gap of over a month, The News learnt on Tuesday.

Amid an extraordinary power crisis, the post of MD, NTDC has been vacant for about a month. Not only this, the important post of MD has not been filled with a permanent MD for over a year barring a three-month period led by a full-fledged professional.

Both, the previous and current governments failed to introduce good governance at the prime transmission utility, undermining fundamental role of this public sector enterprise (PSE) in ensuring smooth running of the national grid.

On June 27, 2022, Federal Ministry of Energy (Power Division) issued a notification for inviting five serving senior officials of the transmission utility for interview in order to fill the post of MD as a stopgap arrangement.

These officials include Deputy Managing Director (Planning & Engineering) Muhammad Ayub, NTDC General Manager Safdar Ali, General Manager (Technical Services Group) Dr Rana Abdul Jabbar Khan, General Manager (Design & Engineering) Khawaja Riffat Hassan, and General Manager (Asset Management) South, NTDC Abdul Qavi Sheikh.

These officers were required to attend Ministry of Energy, Power Division for interview on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 at 03:00pm.

Interestingly, an insider claimed, almost all the top management of NTDC including those referred for the top post were facing multiple inquiries over corrupt practices and misappropriation of billions of rupees.

Officials, who are neat and clean, sources further insisted, were not good managers as they were either indecisive or acted as silent spectators when required to take clear stand on key management and operation-related issues. Some senior lads have temperament issues, the insider further observed.

In such a scenario, he continued to say that anyone appointed from amongst the invited officials would be a bad bet. Hence, government instead should complete hiring through an advertisement.

This process should have been completed till now as last acting MD was appointed in November. Insiders quipped that the Power Division itself has been marred by indecision and hesitancy due to reasons better known to top power managers. Such behavior rendered NTDC virtually non-functional. Insiders were also wary of the role of NTDC board of directors.

“It seems that BoD also failed to take issue of appointing the top boss of the transmission utility proactively. At times, the BoD only insisted on appointing their blue-eyed person or opted to remain silent on this and other key issues,” they alleged.

It should be noted that after unbundling of WAPDA, NTDC was incorporated as a Public Limited Company on November 6, 1998 under the Companies Ordinance 1984 (now Companies Act 2017). After having certificate for commencement of business, NTDC started its commercial operations from March 1, 1999.