PESHAWAR: Just 15 days to the final May 20 deadline of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to inaugurate the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), the main company assigned to operate the system started falling like a house of cards as chairman of its Board of Directors (BoD) and two other important officers of the company have quit apparently in protest against the removal of the chief executive officer (CEO).
The step by the officers leaving the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Urban Mobility Authority (KPUMA) and its subsidiary, TransPeshawar Company (TPC), assigned to maintain and operate the BRT system in the provincial metropolis, has definitely shattered Chief Minister Pervez Khattak’s plans to launch the BRT on May 20 or at least before the expiry of his tenure that ends on May 28.
The provincial government removed the CEO of the TransPeshawar, Altaf Akbar Durrani, on May 2 after he refused to procure busses for the BRT as per schedule desired by the chief minister, and that too at a time when the corridor of the project has not been completed.
His removal was approved by the provincial cabinet at its meeting on April 19, after the chief minister informed it about the impediments in the completion of his government’s lone mega project as per its timelines.
Chairman of the TransPeshawar BoD, Javed Iqbal, who according to the sources, had already conveyed to the sacked CEO that he would also resign if the government went with its plan to remove him (CEO), tendered his resignation the next day (May 3).
Similarly, following in the footprints of the BoD chairman, two key officers, Chief Finance Officer Safdar Sher Awan and General Manager Operations and Market Development Mohammad Imran Khan tendered their resignations in protest against the CEO’s ouster.
The removal of the CEO and subsequent resignations of the chairman BoD, CFO and GM Operations left the Company without its top management that would not only delay procurement of the buses, but also hamper timely completion of some other formalities of the project.
The provincial government wanted to inaugurate the BRT on May 20, for which it sought immediate procurement of the buses.
However, the ousted CEO informed the chief minister about the legal and manufacturing formalities and testing process of the prototype before mass production of the buses that would have to take about a month. This frustrated the chief minister who perused his cabinet to approve removal of the CEO.
In the meanwhile, the provincial government continued with its plan to launch the BRT during the last 20 days of its tenure and adopted another way to arrange buses for the project.
As referred to by the BoD chairman in a rejoinder to one-line resignation, the provincial government intended to acquire the Pink Buses Project to the TransPeshawar.
Transport and Mass Transit Department in consultation with the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and UN Women has developed a proposal for provision of women specific bus services on pilot basis in Mardan and Abbottabad districts.
Japan committed to providing 14 women buses, which would be operated by the TransPeshawar, initially at Peshawar as stopgap arrangement and later on arrival of BRT buses, these will be operated in Mardan and Abbottabad.
Javed Iqbal, in a rejoinder to his resignation addressed to the secretary Transport and Mass Transit Department Kamran Reham, has pointed out that no such project could be assigned to the TransPeshawar.
He has said that any such forced assignment is not only against the express provisions of the law, but it will also place an unsustainable financial and manpower burden on TransPeshawar and runs the risk of jeopardising operations of the Peshawar BRT.
Meanwhile, ex-CEO TransPeshawar, Altaf Akbar Durrani, in a purported letter to the Transport Department, rejected the government’s assertion that he was removed for delay in import of buses.
He said that over the last several months, the chief minister has been insisting on completion of the project by April 20 and later on he changed the date to May 20.
He categorically stated that based on the requirements of the Asian Development Bank’s procurement procedures and the achieved pace of the civil infrastructure work, both the dates were unrealistic and unjustified.
“As such, my removal from the post of CEO was unfair and unjustified and nothing but a case of witch-hunting and ‘scapegoating,” he reportedly writes.
“In the TransPeshawar operational model, buses are being supplied by the owner while the operation of the buses will be contracted out to a private vehicle operating company (VOC). To add to the complications, our buses are equipped with diesel electric hybrid technology, which is a completely new and untested technology in Pakistani environment. Due to these reasons, it is very important to ensure the quality of the buses by implementing all the quality control mechanisms included in the contract and the consultant should not be pressured to provide approvals without ensuring full compliance. Otherwise, if the quality is compromised and there are issues with the performance of the buses, the VOC may not be able to meet their KPIs (key performance indicators), which can lead to a premature failure of the bus operations. The financial, political and social consequences of such a failure will be catastrophic,” he further writes.
Altaf in his letter informed that at the April 19 meeting, he along with bus consultant and supplier put the chief minister in the picture through a big-binder of over 80 pages listing the testing and compliances and the availability of the prototype units for testing from April 22 to 28 and he was informed that by the schedule, the delivery of the first batch of buses in May would be highly unlikely.
