Procurement case: SC wants report on APCs by Dec 20

KARACHI: The Supreme Court directed on Tuesday the managing director of Heavy Industries Taxila to file a detailed report on the quality and standard of the locally-manufactured armoured personnel carriers (APCs). A three-member bench, headed by Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, said the report should be presented by December 20. Till then, the parties will maintain status quo in respect of the APC procurement. The judges were hearing a petition filed by a civil rights campaigner, Syed Mehmood Akhtar Naqvi, who said the APCs being used by the Sindh police were being purchased from Serbia at the behest of former SP Shakib Qureshi. The petitioner claimed that the authorities were purchasing ‘second-hand’ APCs that had been scrapped in Serbia at a cost of Rs120 million per vehicle.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 17^th, 2014.