RAWALPINDI: An attempt to award multimillion development contracts to favoured firms through pool bidding has been foiled as Commissioner Rawalpindi Amir Khattak intervened in the matter and ordered an inquiry.
According to an official notification available with Infra News Pk, the commissioner has constituted a three-member committee to investigate irregularities in the tendering process of several uplift schemes initiated by the District Council Rawalpindi.
The Director General of the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) will head the committee, while the Director Local Government and Community Development (LG&CD) Rawalpindi will serve as secretary and the Assistant Director (Planning) as member.
The body has been directed to examine the causes of delays, assess whether technical evaluations were carried out on merit, and recommend measures to prevent future lapses. It is required to submit its findings within three days.
The district council had floated tenders worth Rs190 million for projects including the beautification of Murree Mall Road, uplift of Market New Murree, and rehabilitation of Library Road Kahutta under the single-stage, two-envelope bidding procedure.
A bid evaluation committee comprising officials from the district and municipal councils, the LG&CD Department, and the finance and engineering wings was tasked with assessing the bids.
Officials informed that out of 12 firms that submitted bids, only three — M/s Shahdaraz, M/s Janjua, and M/s Khaaksar — were declared technically qualified, while the rest were disqualified.
However, some of the committee members refused to sign the evaluation report, citing concerns over the legitimacy of the findings while few disqualified bidders also raised objections, bringing the issue to the notice of Deputy Commissioner Rawalpindi Hassan Waqar Cheema.
Following the complaints, the deputy commissioner directed that the experience documents of the qualified firms be verified.
Sources informed the correspondence with departments whose work orders were cited as experience revealed that most of those documents were fake or unverifiable.
It is alleged that XEN District Counsil Zulqarnain Shah and Chief Officer District Council Kamran Khan were backing these three shortlisted firms despite the discrepancies and wanted to award the contract through pool bidding.
“Transparency and fairness in the evaluation can be assessed from the fact that one of these firms, M/s Shahdaraz, was declared successful in the technical evaluation even though it had not applied for a particular contract”, an officer nformed the Nation, raising his suspicions about collusion and manipulation in the process.
Despite what officials describe as clear evidence of irregularities, Commissioner Amir Khattak has so far refrained from taking immediate disciplinary action against the officers involved and has instead ordered a formal inquiry into the matter.
