CEB’s internal battle likely to result in fresh probes

By Ifham Nizam

A battle between two groups of engineers and Power Ministry officials was likely to lead to investigations into several costly projects, well informed sources said.

Losses that the CEB suffered due to wasteful expenditure and malpractices should not be passed on to electricity consumers, an engineer of the Senior Managers’ Union said.

Citing an example of unbridled waste, engineers said the CEB had spent millions of rupees on the now cancelled 500MW Sampur Coal Power plant.

In another instance, the CEB opted for a single bidder at the expense of competitors in connection with a proposed Rs. 45 billion multi voltages single transmission line project in 2018.

Engineers said that after the pre-qualification of bidders was completed, price bids were called from all pre-qualified parties to obtain the most competitive price. At the pre-qualification stage, the capabilities of the bidders were evaluated, and instead of a reevaluation, what was called for was to widen the scope to generate competition among the pre-qualified bidders to obtain the best price, they said.

Engineers said the project, financed under a JICA loan agreement, envisaged the installation of eight separate 400kV/220kV/132kV transmission line segments. The 400kV transmission line would be built for the first time in Sri Lanka from the Kirindiwela substation to the Padukka Grid substation.

Under a loan facility, amounting to Japanese Yen 24,930 million inked with JICA in August 2015, the Sri Lankan government, through the CEB, will finance SLR 7.87 billion, while the total investment of the proposed project works out to more than SLR 45 billion.

At the pre-qualification stage, only two bidders, Joint Venture led by Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan and Kalpatharu Power Transmission Ltd., India, were shortlisted.

Questions had also been raised over the German consultant for the proposed project as it has been debarred by the World Bank for corruption in an African project, the engineers said, calling upon the government to order a probe into the alleged malpractices.