Two top ranking WAPDA officers suspended
Staff Report

ISLAMABAD—Two officials of Water and Power Distribution Authority (WAPDA) have been suspended from their services due to their involvement in breakdown that occurred on September 24.
After reviewing the report, it has been brought out that for the specific event the responsible persons are Chief Engineer, National Power Control Center Azhar Masood Panni and GM National Power Control Center Salahuddin Rafahi have been suspended.
It has been learnt that proper authorization of the outage of one 500 KV Ghazi Brotha-Lahore line was not taken and appropriate arrangements for redistribution of load and generation were not made.
This rendered the whole system in a precarious power, which was disrupted by a system fault.
As the power system had no margin for contingency, the fault resulted in cascaded tripping.
Accordingly, the two persons are being suspended and their cases will be dealt with according to rules, which envisage issuance of charge sheet to them.
It has also been noted that WAPDA Authority had also not been diligent and particularly concerned about system reliability and stability.
It has been noted that Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) were either deficient or non coexistent.
Additional line such as 500 KV line from Rawat to Lahore was awaiting completion due to non-completion of line bays, a 500 KV/ 200 KV transformer was pending commissioning at Rawat and Muzaffargarh-Gatti line was also delayed.
The authority in its various meeting had not been reviewing power system stability, protection, operation and SOPs.
Displeasure on this is being conveyed to the Authority. WAPDA has been directed to appoint an international Consultant firm to check their entire system configuration, security protection and stability an Angiography of WAPDA.