ISLAMABAD: The top brass of Islamabad Electric Supply Company (IESCO) is making all-out efforts to save its officials accused of being involved in a Rs350 million corruption scam relating to procurement of substandard material for rehabilitation and expanding infrastructure.
According to sources, the top management of IESCO was trying to settle the audit objections raised by auditors in the accounts of the company, reported Express Tribune.
To resolve the matter, the IESCO top management has reached out to the auditors in the last few days and they had called for accountability of the officials involved in the fraud and accused IESCO project director Chaudhry Shoukat Ali alongside five other officials for the impropriety.
Also, IESCO suffered losses of Rs222 million in twenty-three other contracts in which the contractor was granted favour by the project director.
All those involved in the scandal are electrical engineers but were responsible for dealing with civil works and the fraud caused millions of rupees to the state-owned utility by making excessive payments to the contractors.
As per the documents, the auditors during their investigation of IESCO’s records uncovered misappropriation of Rs53.9 million dues to unneeded expenditures on the construction of a duct line.
The auditors observed a big sum of payment had been received by contractors for the removing and re-routing of electric cables from the route of Metro bus project.
Also, the auditors highlighted IESCO didn’t consider moving overhead feeders below the ground, however it spent money on laying a duct line.
The auditors suggested the issue be investigated by an enquiry committee which should be responsible for fixing responsibility and making the recovery.
Another separate case was found to have uncovered excessive payment of Rs21.33 million was given to contractors in absence of proper inspection of project site by the sub-divisional officer (SDO), executive engineer (XEN) and project director.
The auditors noted the bill was endorsed without carrying authentication and suggested the issue be investigated by a committee which would hold the officials responsible and recover the money from them.
Another excess payment of Rs16.39 million was uncovered by auditors to contractors and observed contractors were working in connivance with the project director and utilizing material and labour for their own benefits in contravention of the rules.
