The federal government has decided to give charge of a high profile inquiry pertaining to irregularities in the power sector to former Supreme Court (SC) justice Ejaz Afzal Khan, according to a report in the local media.
The report said a formal announcement in this regard will be made within the next few days.
It is pertinent to mention that the former judge was a part of the SC bench which heard the Panama Papers case. He had retired two years ago.
Earlier, an inquiry committee probing losses in the power sector had provided a report to Prime Minister Imran Khan in which it identified more than Rs100 billion in losses incurred by the national exchequer on an annual basis.
A first of its kind report, it was prepared by a nine-member committee tasked with unearthing the reasons behind the huge losses accumulated by the power sector over the years.
The committee, in its findings, declared agreements made with independent power plants “unfair”.
Losses to the national exchequer were attributed to misappropriation in tariff and fuel consumption rates, as well as a guaranteed profit in dollar exchange rates.
According to the committee’s findings, instead of earning a profit of 15%, power plants were actually raking in 50-70% profit on an annual basis.
The report emerged at a time when the country was already in an uproar over the findings of a separate committee which had investigated sugar and wheat shortages faced by the country over the past few months.
