NATIONAL7Spotlight Weekly)]

Bogged In Controversies

The already delayed hydropower project may still need more time --and money -- thanks to the disputes surrounding it

By A CORRESPONDENT

State owned projects are always taken for a ride. Whether it is the private sector or even the official mechanism, or, in some cases, both the parties hand in gloves, perhaps none has the record of having completed any government project without getting into controversy.

The 144 MW Kali Gandaki "A" Hydropower Project of the Nepal Electricity Authority has been no exception. Right from the time it began on January, 1997, the biggest ever hydel project has frequently been in the news for one or the other reason.

Many a time, labors' strikes in the project site in western Nepal have hit news headlines. Cases related to irregularities and corruption on issues like procuring construction materials, among others, have been time and again trickling in.

And now, a severe jolt has rocked the biggest ever hydropower project whose construction cost may go much higher than what was estimated initially. Almost all the Nepalese technical staff and two non-technical staff resigned from their positions in the project last week.

Kali Gandaki Project : Crisis of confidence

With its 56 technicians having tendered resignation en masse, the hydropower project runs the risk to remain incomplete even after its renewed deadline. The initial deadline of the run-of-the-river project was 2000 November. Thanks to several reasons including the frequent labor strikes in the project site, the deadline was renewed for 2001 November.

Having estimated that the works would not be over by then even, the Civil Work contractor of the Kali Gandaki "A" project Impregilo S.P.A. is said to have demanded with the NEA for the new deadline -- February 2002. That was before the technicians of the project resigned.

Now that almost all the technicians have walked away, the Italian contractor would once again have a reason to extend the deadline of the project. "To extend the deadline of the project, the contractor easily and immediately accepted our resignations," the resigned technicians told a press meet earlier last week. "It knew that our resignation can be a very good excuse to extend the project tenure."

The technicians, most of them engineers, claimed that the contractor will now have to hire new technicians who will first have to be trained before beginning the actual work. And, even if the contractor completes the project within the stipulated time, it will charge extra money for that, the technicians said. "Which means the national coffer will be suffering ultimately."

Why did all the technicians resign en masse? The episode began when Gopal Prasad Mahato, an engineer then working with the project, mistakenly opened what the Contractor claimed to be a confidential file. "When he was searching for a file to change the Bikarm Sambat date to A.D., he happened to come across the file titled Retrenchment Gratuity," a press statement issued by the technicians says.

The management asked Mahato to resign immediately and the mid career engineer did. But what sparked the anger among other technicians was the denial of the Italian Contractor to provide an experience letter to Mahato. "They said they would give me a letter defaming me," said Mahato. "I denied to receive such a letter."

Then after began the mass movement in the project site. When things did not work out even after holding talks, all the technicians opted to resign. Going by the technicians' explanations, Mahato's case was only an impetus to the already enraged project staff due to the "misbehavior of Italians at the project site."

According to Surya Narayan Shrestha, an engineer who resigned together with other technicians, Italians of a little above labor level would misbehave Nepalese engineers at the project site. "The management had also begun to increasingly hire foreign nationals even when Nepalese manpower was readily available."

Whatever may have happened between the contractor and the technicians that led to the latter's resignations, one thing has been for sure: Things are not moving smoothly at the Kali Gandaki "A" project site.

Going by the mood of the technicians, their mass resignation appears to be a card they used to pressurize the management. But, the contractor seems to have found the card to be more handy tool for its "project-tenure stretching" agenda.

Also unanswered is the question why did the technicians not form a union and fight for their cause since the beginning. Why did they get together only after Mahato's case took place?

Making the story more mysterious is the silence of the NEA that had commissioned Impregilo S.P.A. With its ever extending deadline, observers have compare to similarise the Kali Gandaki "A" project with those like Khimti and Bhotekoshi Hydropower Projects, of the private sector -- widely believed to have taken the NEA for a ride.