Jammu, Apr 5: Putting a question mark on the efficacy of the Jammu and Kashmir State Power Development Corporation (JKSPDC), the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has censured the state government’s decision of handing over the Operation and Maintenance of the flagship Baghliar Hydro Power Project to the government of India subsidiary National Hydro Electric Power Corporation (NHPC).
The state government has paid Rs 51.58 crore upto May 2010 to NHPC for the operation and maintenance of the Baghliar power project putting a question mark on the efficacy and planning of the JKSPDC, established with the purpose of running the state-owned power projects, CAG said in its audit report for the year 2009-10.
CAG in its report said that due to the non-availability of the trained manpower, JKSPDC in March 2009 engaged NHPC for operation and maintenance of Baghliar power project at a whopping cost of Rs 74.10 crore for the first year with annual escalation thereafter as permissible under Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) guidelines.
CAG has also picked holes in the manner JKSPDC wasted nearly Rs 4.62 crore for training six engineers in Germany, whose services remain unutilized till date.
“As per the agreement, the contractor was to impart training to the company (JKSPDC) staff for handling of Baghliar equipment and accordingly six officers where sent to Germany. However two of these officers were repatriated to their parent departments after the training, while the services of others could not be utilized as two of them belonged to Mechanical and Civil disciplines”, CAG has maintained.
“Despite paying such a huge amount, JKSPDC failed to build a cadre which could independently handle the operations of the Baghliar power house rendering the expenditure infructuous”, report says.
Pointing out loopholes in the management and planning of the prestigious power project, the CAG report says that JKSPDC had not plan for Operation and Maintenance (O&M) of the Baghliar project.
“Until the commissioning of the power project in August 2008, requisite training for handling, operation of the equipment were not planned,” it said.
Not only this, the report has also questioned the output efficiency at the Baghliar power project. “The targets for generation of power for each year are fixed and approved by the management. However in the case of Baghliar, we observed that instead of fixing targets in terms of units to be generated, the company had been fixing it in terms of the expected revenue”, auditors have pointed out.
The company was able to generate a total of 7979.31 MU of power during 2005-10 against the revalidated design energy of 10790.53 MU. This resulted in a shortfall of 2811.22 MU, the report indicates.
It further says that the company has failed in contracts management, which includes inviting bids, award of work and execution of work in an effective and economic manner. CAG has observed that the company has not maintained any details of contracts at Corporate headquarter in respect of various field units and as such the position of the total contracts signed by the company during 2005-10 could not be ascertained.
JKSPDC had total sanctioned staff strength of 5067 during the 2009-10 but the actual manpower working on the ground was merely 3331, the report said adding that the Corporation incurred an expenditure of Rs 62.94 crore on the salaries of its staff during the year.
Ironically, despite transfer of an entire electric sub-division (Karnah) to PDD, the company continued to pay salaries to the employees and spent a huge amount of Rs 3.61 crore on salary, which was otherwise to be born by the state government.

Lastupdate on : Tue, 5 Apr 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Tue, 5 Apr 2011 18:30:00 GMT
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