A report submitted to a parliamentary standing committee yesterday sketched the picture of this corruption stating that auditors found theft, misappropriation, deficit, waste, irregular payments and failure of bill collection responsible for the debacle of the power board.

According to the report, a total of 20,355 audit objections of various natures have been placed so far. But, surprisingly, only about 700 objections have so far been cleared, as the authorities pay very little attention to allegations of corruption.

"The pace of disposal of the allegations is very slow," said the report. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources expressed its dissatisfaction at the PDB's performance raising questions as to why it was unable to remove the irregularities.

Continuous systems loss of power and fake metre reading also infuriated the committee members.

"I can not believe that in Lalbag and Fatulla, theft is so rampant that the level of systems loss is over 60 percent," comments Shahidul Islam, chairman of the committee.

The committee formed a sub-committee yesterday to probe this corruption.

Corruption in the Rural Electrification Board (REB) also raised eyebrows as they found serious irregularities in a tender bidding for power distribution extension involving about half a million dollars. Another sub-committee was formed to investigate this irregularity, said Committee Chairman Shahidul Islam.

Apprehending more irregularities, the standing committee also sought papers on the Westmont 130 MW power plant in Sirajganj. Westmont signed an agreement in 1998 to set up a barge-mount power plant within 10 months. After a lot of delay, it set up a 90 MW plant. And although it has been given repeated schedules to upgrade the plant to a 130 MW one, it failed to do so. The company is now saying that it will upgrade the plant by March next.

In such a context, Westmont is lobbying for another 130 MW power plant by promising a lot of benefits to Bangladesh. "When they could not fulfil their obligations in five years, how can we trust them again?" Shahidul Islam pointed out.

Sources said Westmont was interested about the second plant as it had an unused 10-year-old power unit in its inventory.

The report on the PDB said 14,812 general objections involving Tk 4,409 crore and 5,477 advance objections involving Tk 3,190 crore remain unresolved since 1971 up to November 2003.

Besides, 355 audit objections since FY 1988-1989 to FY 2000-2001 involving Tk 285 crore lie unsettled.

The PDB however informed the committee that the extent of load shedding was coming down. Where there were 1,042 hours of load shedding in FY 2000-2001 and 900 hours in FY 2001-2002, it has come down to 767 hours in FY 2002-2003.

Committee Chairman Shahidul Islam presided over the meeting, with other members and officials concerned attending.