ISLAMABAD: Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) Chairman Lt Gen(R) Muzammil Hussain Wednesday dispelled the impression regarding anyfavoritism in awarding contract to CGGC-DESCON for construction of Mohmanddam.
Talking to media he said, “Some speculative comments about the contract arebaseless since the entire process has been undertaken with utmosttransparency and without any favour or fear. WAPDA takes pride in its bestpractices and has the confidence of international donors for any commercialfinancing.
International bidding for eligible firms or joint ventures (JVs) wasinvited for procurement in accordance with PPRA and PEC provisions for theproject. About 23 firms purchased the bids while two JVs submitted theirbids,” he added.
He further said, “Technical bids were opened on June 26 in presence of JVs.The bids were evaluated by a consortium of consultants including NESPAK,SMEC (Australia) and ACE and CGGC-DESCON was declared responsive.”
He said as per rules, the company had to have experience of 10 billiondollars work, where the CGGC-DESCON had the experience of 80 to 90 billiondollars.
The chairman said the Chinese company had share of 70 percent while thelocal company had 30 percent.
Pre-award technical negotiations were underway and after finalisation ofthe evaluation process, the contractor was likely to be mobilized byanother 10 weeks by mid March, he added.
The secretary said WAPDA, by using its own capability, would kick off thework in second week of January, including Geotech boring, establishment ofseismic station as well as weather station and preparation of camp site foroptimum utilization of low flow period from January to May. This wouldsubstantially save both time and cost, he added.
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He said the construction work would provide job opportunity to 6,000 localpeople, and provide clean drinking water to whole Peshawar city. He said asper agreement 40 percent workforce would be haired from Pakistan.
The secretary said Pakistani workforce experience with internationalworkers would be beneficial as China had also followed the same formula inconstruction of dams.
To a question, he said the work on the dam would be completed in five yearsand eight month with an estimated cost of Rs309 billion. The dam would havecapacity to store about 1.2 million acre feet water and generate 800 mwelectricity, he added.
He said the dam would be helpful in irrigating thousand of acres of land inKhyber Pakhtunkhwa.
He said initial land acquisition in area had been completed withcooperation of local elders and administration. – APP
