Practical steps: Nandipur Power Plant - dormant project comes to life

Power produced from first turbine is being added to national grid.

Acute energy shortage has been the biggest hurdle in economic progress of the country for a couple of decades. Every government in its tenure made efforts to get rid of power outages but nothing worked out. In fact, the crisis turned severe in the five-year tenure of the previous government.

According to a press release issued by the Press Information Department of the Government of Punjab, the previous government did not make sincere efforts to deal with the crisis. It is a pity that the officials associated with the power energy projects themselves were involved in corruption scandals.



The Punjab government in the five-year term of the PPP government tried to deal with the issue but failed at every stage due to problems created by the central government.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif writing in a national newspaper says, “In the middle of the 2010, a major chunk of the Nandipur project was almost complete and it seemed as if the project would be over on time as we believed there would not be any monetary issues but we were disappointed.”

Since the PML-N government came to power, it started the project again. The supply of electricity from the first turbine of the project has begun, which will officially be launched shortly.

To alleviate the problems facing 93 million people and around 43,000 industries, the Punjab government allocated Rs9 billion for the energy projects for the current fiscal year, says the press release.

An amount of Rs1.36 billion was allocated for the tube wells run by solar energy to meet the requirements of agriculture department. Likewise, the projects of 500 megawatt will be run in partnership with private firms.



The Nandipur Project

It is a combined cycle thermal power plant which is built in Nandipur, Gujranwala. If run with Furnace oil, it will produce 425MW of electricity while with gas it will produce 525MW and by the end of the year it will be completely operational. The first turbine of the project has started producing electricity which is being added to the national grid.

In January 2008, Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) signed a Rs23 billion contract with a China based company Dang Fing Electric Corporation for the construction of the project. The project was expected to be completed in April 2011. Unluckily, the then federal government ignored the project for two years.

Resultantly, the machinery worth 85 million dollars kept lying at the Karachi port.

In September, 2012, the Chinese firm, canceling the contract demanded 40 million dollar as compensation.

Soon after coming to power in May 2013, the PML-N government successfully renegotiated the terms with the Chinese firm.

One July 8, 2013, the Chinese engineers arrived at the Karachi port to examine machinery and the arrangements were made to complete the project.  Some more machinery was bought and the damaged and rusted machineries were got fixed immediately.

According to an estimate, the cost of the project which was Rs23 billion, increased to Rs57.38 billion due to unnecessary delay.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2014.