IESCO management trying to save officials involved in scam

Auditors find power utility has suffered Rs350m loss due to the scandal

ISLAMABAD: Top management of Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) is trying to bail out company officials that have been involved in a Rs350-million scam pertaining to the purchase of poor-quality material for rehabilitating and expanding infrastructure.

Sources told The Express Tribune that senior management of Iesco was making efforts to settle audit objections made by auditors. In this regard, it has engaged with the auditors in the past few days. The auditors had held Iesco Project Director Chaudhry Shoukat Ali and five other officials responsible for the embezzlement.

The project director as wells as the five officials were electrical engineers, but they were handling civil works and caused a loss of millions of rupees to the electricity supplying company by giving benefits and making excessive payments to contractors.



The auditors also unearthed some other major scams that resulted in a total loss of Rs350 million to Iesco as company officials awarded two dozen contracts to their favoured contractors. The public power utility suffered a loss of Rs128 million while installing poor-quality electric pipes along the route of a Metro bus project. It also endured a loss of Rs222 million in 23 other contracts in which the project director gave favour to the contractors who used poor-quality material.

The auditors noted that the general manager had recommended the use of high-quality pipes, but the project director, in collusion with the contractors, used very poor-quality PVC pipes. The auditors emphasised that the embezzled amount should be recovered from the contractors and responsibility should be fixed on the officials involved in the scam.



During scrutiny of company record, the auditors found that Rs53.9 million was embezzled due to unnecessary expenditure on the construction of a duct line. They noticed that the contractors had received highly excessive payments for the removal and re-routing of electric cables from the route of Metro bus project to consumers.

They were of the view that the shifting of overhead electricity feeders below ground was not considered, but funds were spent on constructing a big duct line, which was against the spirit of the government and Iesco.

In another case, an excessive payment of Rs21.33 million was made to the contractors and the project site was also not inspected by the sub-divisional officer (SDO), executive engineer (Xen) and project director.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 11^th, 2018.

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