PPP ex-ministers involved in Bhasha land scandal: Sher
June 16, 2015, Source
LAHORE - State Minister for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali alleged that some ministers of the former PPP government were involved in corruption of billions of rupees in the project of Diamer-Bhasha Dam.
Addressing a news conference here at Lesco head office Monday, the outspoken PML-N leader from Faisalabad however avoided mentioning names of the “corrupt ministers” involved in the scandal despite repeated requests from the journalists.
“The Prime Minister has formed a committee to investigate the matter. We’ll move the NAB in this connection once the committee announces its finding,” he vowed.
Giving short detail, he said that some former ministers had purchased land in the area at lower cost prior to the project (Diamer-Bhasha) and then sold out the same land to the government at higher rates.
“It was a white-collar crime. They (ministers) broke all records of corruption and sold the land at cost even higher than the land in DHA,” he elaborated while revealing the intensity of the scandal.
Mentioning the previous tenures of the PPP and Pervez Musharraf, the minister said, “They looted the country for years. The project cost of Neelum Jehlum Hydropower went up from Rs80 billion to Rs412 billion.” The timely start of the project, he regretted, could have saved billions of rupees.
Former law minister Babar Awan did not process the file of Nandipur project and its cost became double, he further mentioned. He said Nandipur power project and Guddu power plant would become fully operational till the end of this month.
On the occasion, the state minister announced that power loadshedding duration during Ramazan will be six hours in the cities and eight hours in the rural areas. There would be no loadshedding during Sehar and Iftar, he added and vowed that he himself would monitor the load management situation at all distribution companies. The industry, he said, would also face eight hours loadshedding in Ramazan. The areas where theft ratio is higher will not fall in the announced load management schedule, he added.
Abid Sher expressed his government’s resolve to “hang” the corrupt elements in power sector and the “restructuring” of the distribution companies. He said that over-billing would not be tolerated anymore and the elements involved in this regard would not be spared. “The government injected Rs240 billion as subsidy in power sector during the year,” he held.
The journalists grilled the state minister over inclusion of Gas Infrastructure Development Cess into electricity bills, and the minister seemed helpless to justify the move.
The receivables of the power sector were around Rs500 billion (including govt and private sector) while the power companies had to pay around Rs200 billion to PSO, SNGPL and Wapda etc, he told the journalists.
