NAB, FIA investigating corruption in new Islamabad airport construction: Pak aviation min

Pakistan Minister of Aviation, Ghulam Sarwar Khan, notified the country's Senate on October 1 that Pakistan's National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) were conducting separate investigations into anomalies and corruption in the construction of New Islamabad International Airport. According to the ANI, in response to a call attention notice brought by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Senator Mohsin Aziz, on construction problems in the airport building, aviation minister Khan informed the senate. The minister revealed that construction flaws were discovered in the airport's main and cargo buildings built during the previous Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) administration.

"We've discovered a number of abnormalities (in the airport's construction), and it's a long story of corruption," the minister said, ANI reported quoting local media.

According to the minister, there were also construction flaws in the airport's second runway, which the government had to patch up. Aviation minister Khan told Parliament's upper chamber that Islamabad Airport, which began construction on May 6, 2006, with an approved PC-1 of Rs 38 billion, might be finished in 2018 with a total revised budget of Rs 1.25 billion. He blamed the previous regimes of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) for the project's rising costs.

Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan blames former governments 

The minister claims that past governments declared 18 various packages for the airport's development but that these were merely awarded to "accommodate" and enrich the blue-eyed contractors, who were given a 50% mobilisation allowance in advance. He also stated that some issues involving faulty construction were being litigated while others were being arbitrated and that an arbitration order had been issued in the government's and Civil Aviation Authority's favour.

Former Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice (retd) Tassaduq Hussain Jillani, the arbitrator, has ordered the mobilisation advance to be recovered. "However, such orders have been contested in court, causing the matter to be adjourned," he added, ANI reported. He went on to say that the Supreme Court had taken suo motu notice of the matter and had referred it to the NAB and the FIA for investigation. He promised the House that investigations into alleged malpractices would be finished and that restitution would be provided.

(With inputs from ANI)

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