Small power plant projects

A shoddy plan of the power ministry has fallen through. Thank God! But why does it have to be threats of fund suspension from the development partners to make the government come out of its deviant ways? While one feels happy that sanity has prevailed in the power ministry at last, what it was up to by way of implementing small power plant project is mind boggling. But for the World Bank intervention this project would have been pushed through by means that would be patently dishonest.

It defies imagination that the government saw it fit to circumvent existing rules of project implementation, to award unsolicited contracts for the small power plants to different ministers, ruling party legislators and those closely connected with the government. And since none of them had any expertise to undertake such a project, the contracts were to be sold to genuine power developers ultimately at a 'price'. This is crony capitalism at its worst.

We are badly short of power and there is an urgent need to provide relief from the unbearable outages that the people are suffering. But even the concept of having these power plants hook up to the national grid was fraught with risks, should anyone of those were to give up at any time. The project would also have been less than cost effective and may not have been viable in view of the shortfall in gas supply. But the technical aspect of the project notwithstanding, the whole method of tackling this has been highly irresponsible to say the least.

A fair system of tendering would ensure quality work that would not have been possible through the unsolicited contract that the government was planning to work by. We are back to square one, having to suffer avoidable delay that will be imposed due to the need to go through a process of transparent tendering, and the attendant prospect of price escalation. And while some in the party in power would have benefited monetarily the nation would have been the loser on many counts.

We would urge upon ruling party to rise above petty party interest and uphold the interest of the nation first and foremost.