Contract of Golen Gol project challenged in high court

ISLAMABAD, Oct 26: A petition has been filed in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) against the award of a contract of Golen Gol hydropower project in Chitral to a Norwegian power company, Rain Power. The proposed Rs7,035 million power project is expected to add 106 megawatt to the national grid. The petition seeking cancellation of letter of intent to MS Rain Power has been filed by Mohammad Shafiq Swati, president of Center for the Empowering Society (CES), through Hashmat Habib advocate. The petition said the federal government on June 30, 2011, invited the tenders for Golen Gol project. It said the consultant appointed by Wapda had evaluated the tenders and find out that all the bidders had deviated from the original tender terms. The least deviation was from Rain Power whereas maximum from Andritz Hydro. Then a Wapda committee was constituted to review the consultant’s evaluation report as per guidelines given in the instruction of tenders. After the perusal, the committee recommended Rain Power being lowest technically and commercially responsive bidder, for the project, but Wapda accorded approval in favour of Rain Power. The petition pointed out that both the reports of consultant and Wapda had been disputed by Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) and National Accountability Bureau (NAB), saying procurement rules had not been followed. The TIP also moved the Supreme Court which took notice and referred the complaint to chairman Wapda on September 17, 2012. On October 15, 2012, NAB directed Wapda to annul contract forthwith and accordingly the annulment of the tenders was issued on April 12, 2013. According to the petition, after the annulment of all bids, Wapda in accordance with Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) Rules and invited new bids and completed the entire process. It said that Wapda then suddenly scrapped the entire process and new bids for the project and took U turn and issued LOI to Rain Power prima facie. The petition claimed that on August 20, 2013, NAB had advised Wapda to comply with PPRA Rules to ensure transparency and fair play. NAB had recommended that Water and Power Ministry, being the regulator, may take its decision as deemed appropriate. The petition contended that if this decision of awarding contract in violation of the procurement rules is not annulled it would set a bad precedent. The petitioner requested the court to declare the LOI to Rain Power for the said project as illegal. A division bench of IHC would take up the petition on Monday.–Dawn]]>