Karuma, Isimba dams materials inferior - report

KAMPALA. A report of the ad hoc committee investigating

Karuma dam cracks a result of negligence, says minister

The Minister for disaster preparedness, Mr Hillary Onek, has blamed the cracks in Karuma dam on professional negligence of both the contractor and engineers

by contractors and government officials manning the Karuma and Isimba hydropower projects has revealed hair-raising mess at the country’s ongoing two big hydro power projects.
The leaked report which Saturday Monitor has seen warns that if the defects on the two dams, priced at nearly $2 billion-dollar (Shs6.7 trillion), are not arrested, the supervision and management streamlined, the multimillion dollar dams’ durability hangs in balance and speaks of ‘cancer of the structure’ manifesting later.
The July 2016 report, which the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development holds under lock and key, is the product of an eight person ad hoc probe committee led by Prof John Stanley Senfuma and Prof Jackson Mwakali.

The mess
“The contractor is using mild steel rod/ties instead of coupling, which are being cut at the concrete surface. These exposed mild steel rods and ties will lead to corrosion in the future. The contractor has used concrete of inferior class in areas where it is likely to cause cavitation (voids) and scouring (wash-off or erosion of abutments),” a leaked version of the comprehensive report reads in part.
Both dams are planned to be ready by 2018, although experts see meeting that timeline as unlikely due to infighting and lingering questions about integrity of engineering on the projects.

Managers speak out
The Isimba Dam deputy project manager, Mr Pan Xiaolin, however, dismissed the findings as alarmist.
“The report brings out minor construction errors and we feel the committee blows the situation out of proportion. We have brought in experts to remedy the minor defects at Isimba dam project and I can assure you as an engineer, everything is under control,” Mr Xiaolin told Saturday Monitor on phone on Tuesday.
Karuma dam project officials, however, refused to comment on the specific issues of quality raised in the report.
“I have no comment because I am not aware of any such committee or report. I am not answerable to you and I don’t even know who you are,” Mr Qu Jinwei, the liason officer (in charge of Karuma dam-Sinohydro), told this newspaper on Tuesday.

The

Kiggundu to oversee Karuma dam project

President Museveni has appointed out-going Electoral Commission chairman, Dr Badru Kiggundu, to chair a project steering committee to oversee the successful completion of Karuma and Isimba hydropower projects

submitted the report to Energy ministry officials in July and recommended that the structural defects they identified at the two dams be remedied and the supervision and management of the projects streamlined.
The committee was constituted on President Museveni’s orders to investigate alleged inferior works and negligence by contractors and government officials manning Karuma and Isimba hydropower projects. The President ordered line minister Irene Muloni to interdict three key Energy officials superintending the projects and the permanent secretary Kabagambe Kaliisa on April 20 constituted the ad hoc committee to, among other things, establish the validity and extent of the reported shoddy work, interview parties involved in the execution of the work and establish steps to correct defects Mr Museveni highlighted.
The Energy ministry officials, who remain on interdiction, were faulted for sleeping on the job as the country’s flagship infrastructure projects wasted away.

The President directed the ministry to transfer contract administration powers of the two dams to Uganda Electricity Generation Company Limited (UEGCL), an order, though repeated this month, remains unimplemented as the two entities remain deadlocked on the matter.
The investigators, according to the leaked report, found out that the engineers from M/S China Water and Electric International (Isimba) and M/s Sinohydro (Karuma) building the two dams and their supervisors from Energy Infratech Pvt Limited, “are practicing illegally in Uganda” more than three years after the two projects kicked off. The Engineers Registration Act requires all engineers, local and foreign, who practice engineering in Uganda, to register with the Uganda Engineers Registration Board (within four months for the foreign engineers).

Engineers’ registration is, according to members, a quality control and assurance mechanism that insulates their clients from quacks. This means the professional entity regulating engineering works in the country is yet to scrutinise, and or verify, the qualification and competence of the engineers hired to handle the gigantic infrastructure projects.
A senior official from Energy Infratech, the project supervisor, who preferred not to be quoted due to sensitivity of the matter, said “My engineers are certified in India and indeed they were approved to work here by the ministry. For the last three years, no one ever brought the need for them to be registered (in Uganda) to our attention but now that the committee has stated the position of the law, we have sent their names for registration.”

Efforts by this newspaper to get a comment from the two Chinese contractors were futile with repeated telephone calls and visits to their Kampala premises yielding no results.
The officials at the Sinohydro office insisted only Mr Song Yijun, the project manager Karuma, would comment. He was unavailable on the two occasions we visited the office.
Mr Kabagambe said in an interview: “I don’t react to reports, don’t sit in Kampala, read those reports and then form basis for judgment on such huge infrastructure projects where we have put all our time and thinking. Go find for yourself, if you want I can give you access.”
Ms Muloni declined to speak to our reporter despite several attempts to reach her for a comment and dishonoured promises to give an authoritative interview on the two projects to this newspaper.

Pinned
The July 2016 report prominently faults Indian firm Energy Infratech, which Mr Museveni in an April letter branded as “unserious”, suggesting at the time that their contract be cancelled. The two Chinese firms building the dams compromised quality in search for cheaper construction options, the report notes. The report is silent on the responsibility of the Energy ministryUEGCL corporate affairs manager Simon Kasyate said in an email reply: “As the implementing agency of government on these projects (Karuma and Isimba), UEGCL was duly served with a copy of the said report and we welcome the ad hoc committee report, agree with the findings and recommendations. I am constrained to discuss specifics of the findings and or the details of progress on the rectification but we reiterate UEGCL’s unwavering commitment in delivering these projects in time within budget to agreed specifications.”
Mr Museveni in July appointed outgoing Electoral Commission chairman, Dr Badru Kiggundu, to lead a project steering committee that will oversee the progress of the two projects and report to him after every quarter. The committee was inaugurated last week and is yet to get its boots on ground. Dr Kiggundu told Saturday Monitor on Tuesday: “I am not in position to authoritatively comment on the report since I shall be visiting the two dams most probably starting next week.”

The impact

A senior engineer with more than 30 years’ experience in the energy sector, who did not want to be named, told this newspaper in an interview that if the defects are not addressed, “government will have learnt and forgotten nothing from the 1993 experience when Uganda Electricity Board (UEB) had to stop Sietco from extension works of the Owen Falls Dam with 18 per cent works done and bring on board Salini at a higher cost and the project stalling for three years.”
He added: “We will not know what we have built and time will tell us. There are qualities you only see when the project is coming together. If you have no supervision at this stage, you will mess up the project and if the dams are completed with the in-built capacity of 600MW (Karuma) and 183MW (Isimba), they will not be able to produce the projected capacity due to incessant repairs and faults in the plant and that defeats the purpose of increasing capacity.”

In the worst case scenario, Uganda could learn the harder way as the Ethiopians did when the Gilgel Gibe III Dam, a 243-metre high roller-compacted concrete dam with a related hydroelectric power plant on the Omo river in Ethiopia in February 2010, had a critical water-passage tunnel in the dam collapse.
Caterina Amicucci of the Italian group CRBM which had warned government in advance, remarked: “Gilgel Gibe demonstrates that cutting corners does not speed up development, but can rather produce costly disasters.”

Additional reporting by: Frederic Musisi

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