PE board asked to find a chief exec for HIDCL

KATHMANDU, MAR 03 -

Hydroelectricity Investment and Development Company Limited (HIDCL) has asked the Public Enterprises Directorate Board (PE board) to appoint a chief executive officer for it after two consecutive efforts to find one ended in failure.

The company, recently formed by the government to finance big hydropower projects of more than 25 MW capacity, has been struggling to gather an adequate number of eligible candidates.

The establishment of the PE board, charged with governing all the public enterprises in the country, has allowed HIDCL to pass the buck to it to find a suitable candidate for the top job even as it was considering relaxing the eligibility criteria. Board chairman Bimal Wagle said that they would look into the matter soon as the office of the board was set up.

Currently, a three-member management team headed by a director of Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) has been operating its office whose tenure has been extended until mid-April after it expired in January.

HIDCL had advertised for a CEO after its establishment last July. It had set tough criteria in a bid to attract the cream among experts. However, the CEO selection committee headed by NRB Deputy Governor Maha Prasad Adhikary has not been able to find the right man despite issuing vacancy notices twice.

After the failure of repeated attempts to find a competent CEO, the company is now preparing to hold its annual general meeting to relax the eligibility requirements. As per the criteria set by the company, the candidate should have a Master’s degree in commerce or economics with a first division and possess seven years of experience as the chief executive of a banking institution.

“Although we have asked the PE board go ahead with the CEO selection process, we are going to amend the memorandum and articles of association to make the criteria more flexible to avoid a possible repeat of the situation in the future,” said Chaturbhuj Jnawali, a member of the company’s management team.

With promoter partners Rastriya Beema Sansthan and Citizens Investment Trust also injecting a part of the promised capital in the company recently, the company’s board  will fix the date of the AGM soon, according to Jnawali. The AGM is also scheduled to revise the criteria for the deputy chief as the company could not attract enough candidates for this post too.

Source: Kantipur