Filter plants: Litigation puts the squeeze on ambitious water project

After signing a contract, the government invited fresh bids, says firm.

KARACHI:

An ambitious project to install 1,105 water filter plants landed in a quagmire of litigation as the contracting firm took the Sindh government to court for inviting fresh tenders instead of allowing it to complete the work.

On Wednesday, a division bench of the Sindh High Court, comprising Justice Maqbool Baqar and Justice Imam Bux Baloch, heard the company’s lawyer out and then ordered for the public health engineering department, federal secretary of special initiatives in Islamabad and Sindh chief secretary to weigh in among others.

Green Power Business Inter Development Company Limited says that it signed a contract with the public health engineering department on November 5, 2007 to install 1,105 water filter plants at a cost of Rs1.81 billion. Each unit cost 1.6 million rupees. The department was supposed to identify and provide the sites for each unit and ensure supplies of electricity, water and security.

Green Power hired over 400 employees and during the agreed-upon period of three years installed 352 plants at a cost of Rs672 million out of which only Rs385 million was paid. Green Power argues that the work could not be completed and 753 units could not be installed as the department did not provide the sites and other facilities. The company still has 500 units lying in its stores.

Then, the government recently invited a new tender for the installation of 500 treatment plants, Green Power said, seeking a permanent injunction against any new company from enlisted.

Green Power also argued that the project was delayed because of the public health engineering department’s lethargy for which the firm could not be punished.

After hearing the initial arguments by Green Power’s lawyer, the bench ordered for notices to be issued to the respondents for January 24.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th, 2012.