It appears that the tendering process was — again — anything but transparent and NAB is of the opinion that the project is in ‘anything but safe hands’. Terms and conditions of the contract were altered in order to favour a particular company and other companies in the bidding were not aware that the goal posts had been moved. The project is worth Rs10 billion and NAB has now said that the Sindh government has violated the Sindh Public Procurement Regulatory Authority rules in the awarding of the contract.
It now seems at least possible that depending on the findings of the NAB investigation the contract may be cancelled and the entire process will go back to square one. Irregularities were evident early on in the process but it is over a year since the first complaint was made — by another bidder. Damningly safe city projects have been initiated in Islamabad and Lahore and although parts of both have yet to be completed they are up and running in both cities. So far as is known there have been no complaints of serious irregularity in either and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Sindh is so broke in terms of governance that fixing it is a distant dream. Another failure and nobody in Karachi is any safer than they were a year ago.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 3rd, 2018.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
1735196035-0/beyonce-(7)1735196035-0-165x106.webp "article")
1735025557-0/Untitled-(96)1735025557-0-270x192.webp "christopher nolan casts zendaya tom holland anne hathaway and more in adaptation of the odyssey")
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ