Allotment of power projects to 'favourites': civil society threatens to move court

Representatives of civil society organisation have warned that they would move to the court against the alleged allotment of various electricity projects under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to favourite investors by the government without following any tender and other required procedure.
While addressing a news conference at press club on Wednesday, Dr Said Alam Mehsud, central head of Pakhtunkhwa Olasi Tehreek (POT) said the power generation projects are the important element of CPEC, but federal government had kept focus to generate electricity on high-cost, instead of efficiently tapping water resources in this regard. He added that the policy was pushed to substantially increase power tariff up to Rs 18 per unit in the country. However, he alleged the federal government for allotment of various power generation projects worth Rs 2830 billion under CPEC to its favourite investors, by ignoring investors of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Fata, Bolachistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.
Flanked by POT and civil society leaders, including Engr Tour Gul, Nazeef Lala, Faiz Muhammad Kaka, Rakshanda Naz, Noor Durrani, Haji Gul Rehman and others, Dr Said Alam said the power transmission lines are mostly outdated, which was causing line losses to power distribution companies (Discos) by 28 percent.
He maintained Rs 300 billion had also allocated for improvement of electricity transmission lines, which, according to him, would be spent mostly on improvement of power distribution and transmission system in Faisalabad, Lahore and rest part of Punjab province.