PESHAWAR: Concerned over the exit of senior management of TransPeshawar Bus Rapid Transit, the Asian Development Bank is stepping in to save the project from further impediments, according to sources.

Dawn has leant on good authority that the ADB, which has loaned $350 million for the BRT, is concerned about firing by Chief Minister Pervez Khattak of Chief Executive Officer Altaf Khan Durrani and the subsequent resignations of the chairman of its board of directors, chief financial officer and general manager (operations) and is already in contact with officers to salvage the situation.

It was also learnt that the ADB country manager would also be speaking with CM Khattak about the situation. Efforts are being made to speak to the BRT executives and persuade them to return to the job.

It has been learnt that the CEO, who was shown the door by Mr Khattak for speaking his mind on the timelines, may seek legal recourse.

“There is utter lack of understanding of the BRT system at the political level,” a source familiar with the situation told Dawn.

“TransPeshawar has nothing to do with the timelines,” the source said, requesting he not be named. Right from the signing of the agreement to the delivery of the busses and the Intelligent Transport System, all the timelines were in accordance with international protocols and standards, the source said.

Country manager of bank to talk to chief minister about the situation

“Without infrastructure, depots, fuel and charging stations, the busses cannot be run. Also, this is a wholly new technology to be used for the first time in Pakistan. It has to be tested by consultants appointed by the ADB before order could be placed with the vendor to start assembling the busses,” he said.

The source said that busses would be ready for delivery in July and there was nothing TransPeshawar could do anything about it. “Had the KP CM asked the ADB about the timelines, he would have received all the answers,” he said.

The source said that all the former CEO did was to speak the truth to the chief minister and tell him pointblank that the timelines he was suggesting were unrealistic and couldn’t be met.

Also, on the Pink Busses, the source said, the KP government did not create a framework to run those, either in Mardan or Abbottabad or for that matter Peshawar.

“There has to be cost assessment and a project has to be directly assigned to TransPeshawar. There was no legal framework. It was totally illegal,” the source said. “Even as these busses have been given to us free of cost, there is no framework for this.”

He said that instead of giving false timelines and shifting and delaying the launching date, knowing that those timelines were difficult to meet, given the amount of civil work pending, the chief minister needed to change his political narrative. “Rushing the project and using intimidatory tactics would compromise the quality and create more problems,” he added.

The provincial government has assigned additional charge of chairman board of director of TransPeshawar to Additional Chief Secretary Dr Shahzad Bangash here on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa transport and mass transit department has admitted that Pink Buses meant for Abbottabad and Mardan would be run in Peshawar as “stop-gap arrangement” to facilitate commuters in the provincial capital due to delay in the arrival of fleet of vehicles for the under construction Bus Rapid Transit.

In a clarification about Dawn’s story “Bus project’s launch in limbo as managers of its company quit” appeared on Saturday, the department said that later on arrival of BRT Buses, those Pink Buses would be operated in Mardan and Abbottabad.

The statement said that those buses (Pink) would be operated by the TransPeshawar as approved and decided by the provincial cabinet and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Urban Mobility Authority (KPUMA) board in its meetings held on April 11 and April 16 respectively.

It said that UNOPS had informed that the donor (Japanese government) had no issue for the arrangement “stop-gap” considering the better projection of their granted project and the provincial government may in writing intimate the same to UNOPS.

It further said that UNOPS had also confirmed that ambassador of Japan could be available for handing taking over ceremony of Women Bus Project at the Chief Minister’s Secretariat on May 11.

Separately, the department concerned while responding to the letter of terminated CEO of TransPeshawar said that he was ineffectual in timely managing the routine affairs of company such as procurement of bus fleet, Intelligent Transport System, Vehicle Operating Companies and Bus Industry Restructuring Programme.

The department in its rejoinder said that Altaf Durrani (the expelled CEO) had committed to the provincial government at various senior level forums and progress review meetings that TransPeshawar would complete all the procurement process well in time. However, award of procurement of BRT fleet tender could only be made by mid-February 2018 after lapse of two months.

Moreover, procurement of ITS package, selection of VOCs and implementation of BIRP were still under process and could not be completed as per his committed timelines.

The undue delay in ITS procurement process was evident from the fact that faulty documentation was submitted to the Asian Development Bank that could not be cleared till date due to lack of appropriate response to the issues highlighted by ADB in the procurement documents.

Similarly, procurement of VOC, which was an internal process, however, could not be completed till date, due to lack of seriousness by TransPeshawar staff.

The sequential, circumstantial and evidence based trail of information retrieved from various meetings with the chief minister between October 2017 and April 2018 depict that CEO had badly failed in keeping up to the expectations of the provincial government.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2018