Alleging favouritism: PPP invokes NAB in Rs300b Mohmand dam contract case

Bilawal-led party says award of Mohmand Dam’s contract to company owned by PM’s adviser, son conflict of interests

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has demanded that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) probe into award of Rs300 billion Mohmand dam contract to a company owned by close aide of Prime Minister Imran Khan.

“Rs300 billion contact of the mega dam project is being given to Descon [owned by Adviser to Prime Minister on Commerce, Textile, Industries & Production and Investment Abdur Razzak Dawood and his son] which is a conflict of interest,” said the PPP’s Sherry Rehman while talking to media on Wednesday.

She said nobody knows how the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) joint venture was technically knocked out during the evaluation process. “The case should be referred to NAB for investigation,” added the senator, whose party’s top leaders are implicated in a mega graft case.

Addressing a press conference, the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) Chairman Lt Gen Muzammil Hussain, however, said Descon has the required experience. “The local companies have the capability to execute such work. Pakistani engineers would build small dams on Indus River,” he added.

He said Wapda initiated the procurement process following the best practices and in line with the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules and the Pakistan Engineering Council’s (PEC) provisions for civil works, design, supply, installation of electrical-mechanical works and hydraulic steel structures.

Hussian said international bidding for eligible firms or joint ventures (JVs) was invited for procurement in accordance with the PPRA and the PEC provisions. As many as 23 firms purchased the bids and two JVs submitted their bids.

“Technical bids were opened on June 26, 2018 in presence of the JVs. The bids were evaluated by a consortium of consultants including NESPAK, SMEC (Australia) and ACE, wherein CGGC-Descon was declared responsive.”

He said the pre-award technical negotiations are under way and after finalisation of the evaluation process, the contractor is likely to be mobilised by another 10 weeks by mid-March.

He said Wapda using its own capability will kick start the work as early as second week of January including Geotech boring, establishment of seismic station, establishment of weather station and preparation of camp site for optimum utilisation of low flow period from January to May.

“Wapda has been able to successfully realign this important project after a delay of decades. Removing the legal, financial and technical snags, the project is all set to kick start as early as second week of January. This will substantially save both time and cost,” he said.

Responding to the conflict of interest claims, Dawood also issued rebuttal a statement which said the adviser founded and headed Descon Engineering Limited, as he did several other business ventures.

However, the adviser said, he fully disclosed all his business associations to the Prime Minister Imran Khan to ensure transparency and to avoid conflict of interest and resigned from all these associations before joining the cabinet.

He said his disclosure and resignations were provided in writing to the prime minister with the request that these be fully shared with the cabinet. The disclosure had also identified that Descon had already submitted the bid for the Mohmand Dam Project before Dawood joined the cabinet.

The PM felt that this pending project should not prevent Dawood from joining the cabinet. In fact, Imran Khan made a strong plea for the services of the adviser, the statement said.

On joining the cabinet, the adviser had totally distanced himself from his former business interests and had scrupulously observed and implemented all requirements of transparency to avoid conflict of interest.  “There has been no departure from this ethic, whatsoever,” the statement said.

As far as the Mohmand Dam project is concerned, it said, invitation to bids was floated by Wapda on November 23, 2017 in accordance with International Competitive Bid (‘ICB’) prequalification, single stage, two envelope procedure.

Descon submitted its bid in joint venture with China Gezhouba with 30% participating interest on June 26, 2018. As per the rules, technically qualified bidders were entitled for the financial bid opening and CGGC- Descon JV was the qualified bidder.

“It is for Wapda to comment on the bidding process leading to the successful bidder with its extensive experience in tendering for projects in and outside Pakistan, the Mohmand Dam bids arranged by Wapda were processed as fully compliant with national and internationally-accepted (‘ICB’) bidding procedures,” it added.