Set up disaster management group of experts for Thein Dam

PATIALA, OCT 4: The Punjab State Electricity Board Engineers8217; Association today demanded setting up of a disaster management group of national and international experts to attend to the problem at the Ranjit Sagar Dam.

Padamjit Singh, president of the PSEB Engineers8217; Association, said the visit of a high-level team to the Thein Dam on October 1 was a futile exercise as the team comprised three bureaucrats and two engineers, out of which only one was a civil engineer. He said the first step should have been to constitute an expert group of civil engineers of national and international repute to study the defects and work out a disaster management plan to save the dam.

He wondered how the high-level team gave a time frame for repair or cost of the repair at Rs 2 crore, when it was still groping in the dark about the nature of defects in the dam.

He alleged that the authorities were misleading on the estimate of the repair of the dam. The interest on a sunk investment of Rs 3,300 crore alone was over Rs 1 crore per day, while the power generation loss was Rs 1.5 crore per day, he added.