Execution of Islamabad's new airport project: Rs 30.37 billion irregularities detected

The Auditor General of Pakistan has detected massive irregularities worth Rs 30.37 billion in the execution of the New Benazir Bhutto International Airport during last year even before completion of the multibillion rupees project.
The account assessors have raised nine objections on the accounts of the Civil Aviation Authority, the airport managing body, pertaining to this mega project.
The auditors have categorised their objection into irregularities, overpayment, unjustified expenditures and unauthentic payments.
According to the audit report available with APP, the Authority has made an irregular payment of Rs 7811.23 million to Lagan-Technical-Habib due to unauthorised change of joint venture between Civil Aviation Authority and Lagan-Husnain at New Benazir Bhutto International Airport.
An unauthentic payment of Rs 19929.61 million was also made to the concerned parties without detailed measurement of each item of work done in measurement books, report added.
The Audit further pointed out that the Project Director of New Benazir Bhutto International Airport accepted adverse engineer's decisions involving a sum of Rs 3552.30 million in respect of package-I Airside Infrastructure in favour of the contractor Lagan-Technical-Husnain against which a sum of Rs 1556.47 million was paid to contractor in settlement of dispute under the engineer's decisions' No 1 to 10. Payments were made without the approval of the dispute review board, it added.
Audit observed that due to the complete management failure and invalid decisions, the irregular expenditures of Rs 1556.47 million was occurred.
Moreover, the CAA constructed a secondary runway parallel to the main runway at a distance of 210 meters between the center lines of both the runways against the recommended distance of 1035 meters at cost of Rs 719.09 million at NBBIA.
Audit holds that the construction of secondary runway was violation of international standards due to inadequate oversight mechanisms and non-exercising of the relevant rules and protocols.
The audit further highlighted that overpayment of Rs 350.67 was also granted to the contractor due to inadmissible price escalation on bitumen in airside and landside infrastructure including unjustified payment of Rs 9.4 $ foreign currency exchange rate without required proof.
Being constructed over above 3,000 acres of land in Fateh Jang area, the project was kicked off in 2007 and is located some 25 kilometres from Zero Point, 28km from Sadar Rawalpindi and 30km from existing Chaklala Airport.
The new airport, would replace the existing overloaded Chaklala Airport.
The new facility would feature a passenger terminal building, runways, taxiways, apron and parking bays for wide body aircraft. It would be equipped to handle all types of aircraft including the new generation aircraft such as the Airbus A-380.
The airport will have a 180,000m modular terminal building which will initially be able to handle nine million passengers a year and will also have two 4,000m-long category-F runways.