Roshan Sindh Project: Six accused willing to deposit Rs 75 million, AC informed

The Accountability Court hearing fake bank accounts case was informed on Monday by National Accountability Bureau (NAB) that six accused of Roshan Sindh project have shown willingness to deposit Rs 75 million under plea bargain. The Accountability Court Judge Muhammad Bashir was told by NAB officials that six accused of Roshan Sindh project including Aslam Pervez, Abdur Rasheed Channa, Zafer Enterprises, Aziz Tehseen, Baleedo and Abid Arai have expressed willing for plea bargain.

The anti-corruption watchdog had linked inquiry related to the Roshan Sindh project with the investigations into fake accounts case and the case was transferred to NAB Rawalpindi. The NAB prosecutor told the court that NAB has issued call-up notices to three accused including Aziz Tehseen, Abid Arai and Baleedo. He said that the accused Aslam Pervez and Abdur Rasheed had allegedly availed benefit of Rs 2.5 million and Rs 5 million respectively while awarding the contract. Zafer Enterprises had allegedly incurred loss of Rs 64.2 million to the government of Sindh, he said.

Meanwhile, the NAB officials produced two accused Shakoor, former Director General (DG) rural development, and Abdul Sattar Qureshi, former XEN, before the court on expiry of their physical remand. The NAB requested the court to extend the physical remand of the accused in order to conduct further investigations from them. The court approved NAB's request and granted 10 days physical remand of the accused. The court ordered to produce both the accused on October 24 before it.

According to details, the Sindh government on September 22, 2014 approved the first project of Roshan Sindh to install 20,000 solar lights by June 2016 in the major municipal and town committees across the province at a cost of Rs 4 billion. Reportedly, streetlights that work on solar energy were installed on specific roads of certain cities, while the majority of the areas were ignored. Originally, 1,000 solar lights were to be installed in districts Malir and West Karachi, 4,000 in Hyderabad division, 3,500 each in Mirpurkhas and Shaheed Benazirabad, 4,000 in Sukkur and as many in Larkana. This project also turned out to be the costliest of them all, with each of the installed solar bulb costing Rs 0.2 million.

The second project, estimated at Rs 3 billion, was meant to install solar lights in rural areas. This project was approved on October 26, 2016, and was supposed to be completed by June 2018. The third project, with a price tag of Rs 1.5 billion, was advertised as the second phase of the earlier scheme to install solar lights in rural areas. Around Rs 750 million have been spent on the project from the beginning of the current year that will be completed by 2020.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019