The latest confusion and ensuing mess regarding the choice of installing a land or floating gasification and storage facility for the Vassiliko power station makes one wonder if there are any people in government who know what they are dealing with.
If so, they have an obligation to the taxpayer to stand up and tell us whether any of the two plans is fallible and if this will cost the island’s energy state of affairs dearly in the short, medium and long term.
But in the absence of such a Lone Ranger voicing the truth, one can only conclude that those in charge of our future energy needs and supplies are the Electricity Authority technicians and the unions that run their strings.
If, in fact, a private company has been “scandalously†awarded a contract for a floating unit, then this begs a series of questions starting with ‘Who planned the power station?’ and followed by a logical chain of thought with ‘What were/are the fuelling requirements?’, ‘Who approved the plans and budgets?’, ‘Why (if at all) does the EU object to either facility’ and of course ‘Who gave the final green light, disregarding the conflicting views of the EAC management and staff?’
To top it all off, we wonder if the term ‘Corporate Governance’ has at all penetrated beyond the thick skulls of those in power or those who are convinced they control power.
At the present juncture of millions being spent (or squandered) this smacks of criminal negligence on behalf of those charged with looking after our energy resources and utilities, while those in the know should be held equally accountable for not speaking up when they should have.
There are also those who believe that by fooling their non-expert executives, their own mistakes will never be discovered and they will escape the witch hunt of yet another white elephant. (By the way, why is the Nicosia General Hospital scandal no longer a scandal, and why are millions continued to being dished out by the bucket-load for projects that should not have had public funding from the tax-payers’ money?)
Perhaps the public-private partnership (PPP) and the build-operate-transfer (BOT) method of efficient management should also replace the semi-government sector or even the government itself. But then we will be faced with the dilemma of who will put pen to paper and draft the requirements for such a contract, without robbing the tax payer (as recent cases have proven).
At this pace, we might as well employ wind energy – there is enough hot air going around to drive ten Vassiliko power stations.
