ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court Wednesday referred the matter to the dispute resolution committee regarding contract for construction of Winder Dam in Balochistan.

A two-judge bench comprising Justice Mushir Alam and Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin on Wednesday heard an appeal of secretary Irrigation Balochistan against the high court decision on auction of Winder Dam contract.

The BHC had ordered for an open auction for awarding the construction project of the dam. The apex court asked the committee to hear Construction Association of Pakistan, a private company.

It said if the construction company is not satisfied with the committee's decision, then it could again approach the court. The company's counsel told the bench that the dam project could only be awarded to a company, which already had experience of constructing dams. However, the authorities violated this rule and rejected the offers of top 10 companies.

He said they had challenged the award of contract to the company, which had no experience. The lawyer argued that the government engineers themselves said rules were violated in the award of contract, adding transparency was not maintained, while awarding the contract. Justice Qazi Amin said in mega projects the government did work according to its own understanding.

He told the counsel that on the transparency issue they were with you but due to delays the cost of the project would increase.

"The delay in the project could soar the cost from Rs10 billion to Rs50 billion," remarked Justice Qazi Amin.

The counsel said to award the contract to a company, which had no experience of constructing dams, would be dangerous.

For construction of Winder Dam, the tender of the project was opened on September 28, 2009, and awarded to a joint venture of Canadian and Pakistani consultants and contractors.

Due to failure of the contractor to provide performance guarantee, the contract was cancelled.

An earth-core rock-fill dam will create gross storage of 36,484-acre-feet of water to irrigate 10,000 acres of command area, and its power house will generate 300kW electricity.

The Winder Dam project will now be constructed at the cost of Rs15.230 billion.

The federal government will finance the project entirely, which would be executed by the Irrigation Department of Balochistan government.

The main objective of the project is to provide 50 cusecs assured irrigation water supply to irrigate 10,000 acres of agriculture land round the year with average cropping intensity of 82 per cent.

The Winder Dam located across Winder River about 100 km from Karachi in Lasbela District of Balochistan will also generate 0.3 megawatts of electricity.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020