Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, May 24:

Even as the Royal Commission for Corruption Control (RCCC) is probing the alleged abuse of authority in the access roads of the Melamchi Drinking Water Project (MDWP), Sharma and Company — a contracting firm which was awarded the job after Hanil Kaneco was sacked — today defended the circumstances under which it was awarded the contract following a due procedure. The company was awarded the construction of Sindhu and Gyalthum access

roads of the project on December 23, 2004, following the sacking of Hanil Koneko as the contractor. Claiming that Hanil Koneko was not very earnest in undertaking the construction job following the realisation that it had quoted a very low amount, the Executive Director of Sharma and Company, Ramesh Sharma, today said that Hanil Kaneko would have taken 10 years to complete the project at the speed with which it was working. He denied any “irregularities” or “peddling of political influence” while acquiring the contract at an inflated rate of around Rs 950 million even as he attributed hike in project cost to general price rise and wage hike.

He pointed out that the price of diesel had shot up to Rs 41 per litre in 2004 from Rs 18 in 2001. Cement price, too, had jumped to Rs 400 per bag from Rs 200 in 2001. He also said that while the company had quoted just under Rs 790 million, the rest of the sum was part of contingency and related tax. He also said that there were changes in road specifications with the breadth increasing by half a metre from four metres to four-and-a- half metres even as he added that the job demanded blasting of rocks by hydraulic breakers which was not the case when the contract was awarded for the first time. Meanwhile, former secretary of the Ministry of Physical Planning and Works Tika Dutta Niraula today reiterated that it was the then prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba who had given a go-ahead to contract award for the construction of the access roads. “It was the prime minister’s directives...I had not given any decision on the issue,” he told the Royal commission bench today.