Staff Reporter The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) on the instructions of Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has registered four FIRs into Rs4.4 billion fraud into Right Bank Outfall Drain-II (LBOD-II) against Chief Engineer /PD RBOD-II Munawar Bozdar, now retired, Waqar Ahmed Qadri SE RBOD-II BPS-19, SE Imran Shaikh, XEN Ghaffar Soomro, AXEN Altaf Memon and 16 others. The RBOD-II schemes was conceived and streamlined for disposal of drainage effluent from RBOD-I to sea in environmental friendly manner without interference with fresh water boides like Manchar Lake and Indus River. The project was started in 2003 for Rs14 billion which was latter on revised to Rs29.217 billion and revised again for Rs61.985 billion. ON November 12, 2018 a reference was received from some engineers wherein serious charges of Irregularities in disbursement were levelled. On the instruction of Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah an team of Irrigation department conducted an inquiry into the matter in April 2019. The Planning & Development Department with the approval of the chief minister referred the matter to the Anti-corruption department for necessary action. The ACE through an inquiry and technical inspection concluded that the so-called expenditures incurred against flood emergent works/flood damages Rs4.482 billion was completely bogus and fraudulent thereby caused huge public exchequer. Findings of Inquiry: The inquiry findings submitted to Chairman anti-corruption M. Waseem say that Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) for bill verification from consultants and its vetting from the concerned forum was not followed. There was no provision of flood damages in the approved PC-1 of RBOD. The report says that SPPRA rules and regulations were violated. No tenders were called and even SPPRA rules for emergency award of contract was invoked. Top of it there was no flood like situation in the river during the period in question. The year, 2017 and 18 were flood free year. The flood damages shown in the year 2018 is highly surprising due to reason that in this period the river was not even in a low flood situation.
