The Ministry of Water and Power has declared the 425MW Nandipur power generation plant full of faults, passing the buck on its management, despite terming it a state-of-the-art project and strongly defending the charges of corruption for years.

The Nandipur project is not delivering as per the plan and its current affairs are the direct responsibility of the management, said a letter issued from the Ministry of Water and Power. Explanation must be required from the management of the project to explain why the plant is not generating electricity as per capacity, causing hue loss to the national exchequer. But question arises that would such letters be able to cover up the corruption of real culprits?

It is indeed a tragedy that power plant remains idle despite massive cost overruns, and the government, which once advertised the project as an achievement of its is now calling for an audit of the scheme. On the larger scale it’s a worrying sign, many other projects to fulfill the deficit of energy crisis are connected with China Pakistan Economic Corridor projects, and failure of Nandipur has cast shadow over those projects as well.

One large CPEC project in Gadani has already been wound up because it ran the risk of becoming another example of failure, but on a far bigger scale. Given this context, it is imperative that the Nandipur fiasco be examined very closely so the causes of the failure could be portrayed from it. The project has suffered from a wide range of governmental failures, incompetence, poor planning, haste, lack of coordination. Incumbent government which celebrated the inauguration of the project now trying to push blames towards previous government for the complete fiasco. Incumbent government is finding itself in hot waters as other political parties are raising this issue in various forums including Parliament.

 A comprehensive probe should take place to find out causes of fiasco of mega project.