Work on Thangu micro hydel project resumes after 13 yr delay and excess expenditure of Rs 5 cr

SPDC TO PROVIDE TECHNICAL EXPERTISE TO PROJECT DEVELOPERS
ANAND OBEROI
GANGTOK, 01 August: Chastised for wasteful expenditure by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India’s report this year, the State government has decided to go ahead with the 2x100 KV micro hydro power project in Thangu, North Sikkim which is to be developed by the same cooperative society which was given the project earlier and which has failed to deliver for 13 years now.
In fact it was only a few weeks back that the Cabinet approved the project in favour of Constructional and Power Generation Cooperative Society, Lachen, which is to now execute the project. An amount of Rs. 6 crore has also been sanctioned.
The cooperative society will undertake the project with technical expertise provided by the Sikkim Power Development Corporation (SPDC) and under the supervision of the Science & Technology Department.
When contacted, Secretary, Science & Technology, P Euthenpa, also confirmed that the cooperative society has also put-up an allocation of Rs. 23 lakh which has been approved by the department after carrying out a detailed study of the project and preparation of reports on the works that are being carried out.
With the funds now with the State Council of Science & Technology, the work is informed to be underway on a ‘war footing’ and as the Secretary informed, this will be constantly monitored.
This comes after a 13-year delay and wasteful expenditure of over Rs. 5 crore for a project which initially was estimated to cost only Rs. 86 lakh.
Sikkim State Council of Science and Technology, Secretary accepted that the RMDD had actually constructed a PMGSY road on the site which was earlier surveyed and selected for developing the project and the entire process was ‘prolonged for some time’.
“We had to redesign and re-plan the set up of all the channels in the project and new surveys were undertaken jointly by S&T and SPDC along with officials from GoI. Works are being carried out on a war-footing and we have no hurdles now,” stated the Secretary.
Government officials accept the CAG report and also concede that the blame for cost escalation as well as delay in execution lay primarily with the ineffective coordination among the concerned departments, the Science & Technology and RMDD.
It may be informed that the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) report 2011 has stated that ‘Injudicious selection of inept contractor, unsuitable site and inexplicable apathy towards the execution of 200 KW Thangu Micro Hydro Project resulted in price escalation of Rs. 5.2 crore, delay of more than 13 years, infructuous expenditure of Rs. 79.41 lakh, beside frustrating the basic objective of providing electricity to the intended beneficiaries.’
The Ministry of Science and Technology had sanctioned the mini hydel power project in November, 1998 to address the electricity demand of the public of Thangu village and the defence establishment. The estimated cost of the project was Rs. 86.65 lakh with a stipulation to complete the works within two years. The project cost was revised to Rs. 6.06 crore in October 2010 and out of Rs. 4.67 crore, Rs.79.41 lakh was spent as of October 2011.
The CAG further reports that scrutiny of records (January 2011) revealed that the project work was tendered and awarded in January 2006 to Lachen based society on a turnkey basis with the stipulation for completion within one year. The work execution by the society was not monitored by the State Council on a regular basis, as a result of which it could know only during site inspection on October 2007 that the work had been stopped due to construction of a PMGSY road by the RMD department.