ISLAMABAD - The procurement process of hiring a contractor to run Head Muhammad Wala Bridge hit a controversy that needs to be investigated on part of the highups of the National Highway Authority.
As per prevailing practice, the bids are received and opened in respective regions but rest of the process is being completed here in Islamabad at NHA headquarters, which is creating hurdles and anomalies and needs to be discontinued immediately to avoid such scandal in future.
NHA awards such OM&M contracts on single stage two envelope procurement procedure for which both e-bid and physical bid is necessary to be submitted before deadline and if any of one is not received or even discrepancies are found in both methods of submission, the said bidder is declared as non-responsive—pushing him out from the process.
However, in the aforementioned particular case, the bids for Head Muhammad Wala were received in the Multan region and only three contractors including M/s Khan Brothers, M/s Iftikhar Bhatti and M/s Saleem Buzdar have submitted their technical and financial bids in hard form.
The technical bids were opened in the presence of all bidders in the office of General Manager Multan and according to the relevant document available with this scribe, only three bids were opened and the same was conveyed to the headquarters.
However, interestingly, when the technical evaluation report was prepared, a fourth bidder named M/s Mashallah Enterprises was not only included in the list but also declared as qualified bidder, which was meant to influence the procurement process and needs to be investigated by the high ups who were involved in it.
When contacted, General Manager Revenue Mr. Taimour informed that the e-bid of M/s Mashallah Enterprises was received but the physical bid could not be reached well on time. He said we have included the said bidder in technical evaluation on the basis of his e-bid but later the Member Finance NHA Syed Mazhar Shah has decided to not open its financial bid to avoid any criticism from the rest of the bidders.
Sources informed that the revenue section of NHA was trying to give favour to said blue eyed contractor and declared it as technically successful but one of the bidder approached Chairman NHA Sheryar Sultan, who not only expressed his displeasure but also directed to exclude the new bidder from the process as per the rules.
It is pertinent to mention here that there are a lot of issues in the procurement processes of toll plazas as it continues round the year and a strong curtle of insiders and contractors have become quite powerful, which eventually influence the procurement processes.
A senior officer of the authority, who remained involved in such processes in the past, has said that the revenue side needs a proper special audit of how things are being dealt in the revenue section while a centralised and transparent system is needed for such an important subject.
“The bids should be processed either at regions or at headquarters for transparency and avoiding anomilies,” a former relevant officer of NHA suggested.