By Ifham Nizam

Sources in the Ministry of Power have revealed to The Sunday Island that the recent two-week trip by a very senior engineer of CEB has not been approved by the Minister of Power, although CEB has allowed this officer and another engineer to travel to Turkey.

Under existing Government regulations, all state-sector employees traveling overseas for duty or personal reasons are required to obtain the prior permission of the Minister in charge with the recommendation of the Secretary to the Ministry concerned.

It is understood that the Power Secretary has not forwarded the documents received from the CEB for the approval of the Minister. It is understood that the Ministry has requested a personal guarantee from the CEB Chairman certifying that the above foreign travel by the two CEB engineers was absolutely necessary in view of the severe foreign exchange shortage in the country.

The Sunday island learns that CEB Chairman M M C Ferdinando has not forwarded this certification to the Ministry to date.

A senior engineer said that this is considered a serious breach of government rules for state officials to leave the country without required permission.

The applicable circular instructions state clearly that officials shall not travel without such permission, even if all paperwork has been submitted to the line ministry for approval in the expectation of receiving such approval.

CEB does not issue foreign exchange for official foreign travel without this approval of the Minister of Power. Several trade unions in the CEB questioned whether an exception was made by the CEB management in this case because of the powerful connection of the senior engineer in question.

CEB announced last week that it had suspended all new connections because of the serious material shortage it was facing because of lack of foreign currency to pay for essential items.

Against that backdrop, it is highly questionable why these engineers were issued foreign exchange for a non-essential factory test of transformers which could have been conducted online easily.

A large number of factory testing of transformers and other critical equipment have already been performed successfully by CEB engineers during the last two years because of travel restrictions in European countries.

Several present and retired CEB engineers The Island spoke to were skeptical as to why the CEB management considered testing of small 10MVA transformers at the factory to be so important and sent a very senior CEB engineer to Turkey when much larger transformers of significantly higher value used in the transmission system have been successfully factory-tested by CEB engineers online.

It is reliably learnt that the CEB has issued the senior engineer concerned a round trip business class air ticket for his travel.

This trip gets even more baffling because it is learnt that the Indian contractor involved in the ADB-funded project under which these transformers were purchased by the CEB has paid for accommodation and meals of these two officers during their two-week stay in Turkey.

As a rule, CEB always pays the full cost of participation, including travel, accommodation, meals and other incidental expenses of engineers participating in factory testing of equipment because the CEB inspectors should not be under any obligations to the suppliers or contractors.

Therefore, payment of hotel charges, meals and other expenses by the contractor constitutes a serious conflict of interest.

Banks have issued only USD 1,000 exchange for each of the two engineers. There could not have been any doubt that the CEB management, as well as the Ministry officials, were well aware that the officials concerned could not have paid for their accommodation and other expenses out of their own funds even if they wanted to do so, as credit card payments abroad have been severely restricted.

CEB trade unions question whether CEB allowed these engineers to travel to Turkey knowing that their expenses would be paid for by the contractor who supplied the very transformers that were to be tested.

Further, CEB does not generally allow weekends in factory testing as most factories in Europe and other countries like USA and Japan do not operate their testing facilities on weekends.

These two officers are reported to have spent two weekends elsewhere in Europe during their trip to Turkey.