The Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) has detected massive irregularities worth Rs 30.37 billion in the execution of the New Benazir Bhutto International Airport (NBBIA) during last year even before completion of the multibillion rupees project.
The account assessors have raised nine objections on the accounts of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), pertaining to this mega project. The auditors have categorised their objection into irregularities, overpayment, unjustified expenditures and unauthentic payments. According to the audit report, the authority has made an irregular payment of Rs 7,811.23 million to Lagan-Technical-Habib due to unauthorised change of joint venture between CAA and Lagan-Husnain at NBBIA.
An unauthentic payment of Rs 19,929.61 million was also made to the concerned parties without detailed measurement of each item of work done in measurement books, the report added.
The audit further pointed out that the NBBIA project director accepted engineer’s ‘adverse’ decisions involving a sum of Rs 3,552.30 million in respect of Package-I Airside Infrastructure in favour of the contractor Lagan-Technical-Husnain against which a sum of Rs 1,556.47 million was paid to contractor in settlement of dispute under the engineer’s decision No 1-10. Payments were made without the approval of the dispute review board, it added. The AGP observed that due to the mismanagement and invalid decisions, the irregular expenditures of Rs 1,556.47 million were incurred.
Moreover, the CAA constructed a secondary runway parallel to the main runway at a distance of 210 meters against the recommended distance of 1,035 meters at a cost of Rs 719.09 million at NBBIA. Audit holds that the construction of secondary runway was in violation of international standards due to inadequate oversight mechanisms and non-exercising of the relevant rules and protocols. The AGP further highlighted that overpayment of Rs 350.67 million was also granted to the contractor due to inadmissible price escalation on bitumen in airside and landside infrastructure including an unjustified payment.
Being constructed over above 3,000 acres of land in Fateh Jang area, the project was kicked off in 2007 and is located some 25 kilometers from Zero Point, 28km from Saddar, Rawalpindi and 30km from existing Chaklala Airport.
The new airport would replace the existing overloaded Chaklala Airport, new features including a passenger terminal building, runways, taxiways, apron and parking bays for wide body aircraft. It would be equipped to handle all types of aircraft including the new generation aircraft such as the Airbus A-380. The airport will have a 180,000m modular terminal building which will initially be able to handle nine million passengers a year and will also have two 4,000m-long category-F runways.
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