Loud Thinking July 26, 2014 at 03:56AM

Why our MNA’s and Senators are mum in the parliament over the eye opening Nandipur power plant fiasco as revealed by the following editorial of the daily “The Nation”.

The Nandipur Fiasco

July 25, 2014

It’s been in the air for a long time, that the Nandipur Power Project is a doomed project, bound to fail, a fake, a fraud. We have been duped again with promises of energy provision amounting to naught. PTI was the first on the scene to protest the project earlier this month and now it seems with good reason. The project has been an example of how not to set up an energy project lacking logistical and infrastructural planning. The Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali has said that the plant is in working condition and only one turbine had to be shut down due to technical reasons; that the PTI was just spreading propaganda against the government as usual.
All lies. The National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) has revealed that the Plant generated electricity was shut down after only five days of operation. The first units of the plants to come online was run on diesel fuel for five days after its inauguration, but closed down for being too expensive. The cost of the Nandipur project also went up to Rs59 billion compared to the initial estimate of Rs23 billion. The plant was supposed to generate electricity at the most at Rs24 per unit by consuming high-speed diesel, it has produced it at Rs42 per unit. NTDC has said that the plant was taken online too soon, the project was not ready and technical and legal criteria for operation were not fulfilled. Again, publicity stunts in place of real progress by the Sharif brothers. What else is new? How can they spend money the country doesn’t have, that too, on failed projects that produce no power or income?
The system is wrought with inefficiency and bad planning. There are four power plants of over 800 megawatts available in Lahore but are closed most of the time. The policy on the construction of dams including Bhasha and Kalabagh is a political landmine. The Nandipur Project Director Muhammad Mehmood was already hired on controversial grounds. The whole system is broken, and anything fair or unfair that comes out of this bureaucracy seems to be illegally achieved. And then, the bestowing of a Tamgha-e-Imtiaz on Mehmood… for what exactly? Nandipurs success? It is almost unimaginable that the government and bureaucracy can spend this amount of time and money so irresponsibly and with so little accountability.

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