Descon, a company owned by Adviser to Prime Minister on Commerce, Textile, Industry, Production and Investment Abdul Razak Dawood and a Chinese company, China Gezhouba, have won the bid for construction of Rs 309 billion Mohmand Dam with a capacity to generate 800MW.
Mohammad Dam is basically the flood control dam and after its construction the dam will be able to store 300,000 cusecs of water.
The cost of the said project in 2003 stood at $1 billion, which swelled to $3 billion because of the inordinate delay in Musharraf’s regime.
The said dam if completed on time, the 2010 flood could have been averted and the loss of $10 billion incurred on account of the flood could have been minimised.
During the Musharraf regime, the said dam was handed over to a US company – AMZO which did nothing for 8 years and inflicted a huge loss of Rs 152 billion to Pakistan economy. However, in PPP era the project was handed over to WAPDA.
Soon after that the WAPDA arranged $6 million from Afd, a French development agency for detailed engineering of the project. The construction of Japanese and Australian firm carried out the detailed engineering of the project and handed it over to WAPDA in 2014.
WAPDA Chairman General (e) Mozammil Hussain confirmed that the joint venture Descon and China Gezhouba have won the bid and. “The international competitive bidding was held in single bid mode and the Joint Venture of Descon and China Gezhouba has qualified for the project. Other joint venture of FWO with Power China also participated the bid which could not win the project,” chairman said.
WAPDA will also make the Kuafer Dam. “This will help reduce the cost of the project as earlier the finalized bidder used to do all such works.”
Hussain further said that the dam will be completed six months earlier in April-May 2023. “We are in the process to negotiate the winning bidder for further cut in the bid and hopefully Pakistan will be able to make this vital project on a very competitive price,” the chairman said, adding: “You can say that WAPDA has achieved the comfort level for initiating the construction of the project after the successful bid of the project.”
However, the top officials in the Ministry of Water and Power said that the project was being initiated in haste as its financial closure was yet to be achieved. “Its land has not yet been acquired and consultancy firm is yet to be finalized.”
“Moreover the revised PC-1 of the project based on the bid of the project is yet to be approved and in the absence of the said pre-requisites the haste groundbreaking of the project is beyond our comprehensions.”
The groundbreaking of the project was due on January 2 but on account of pressing engagement of prime minister it has been now postponed till further orders by the PM Secretariat.
Published in Daily Times, January 2nd 2019
