Lodhran police to build ‘welfare’ shops

Construction planned on space allotted for police station

LODHRAN:

The district police authorities plan to build around 25 shops on space allotted for a police station.

The district police officer had issued an advertisement on April 14 about the rent auction of police welfare shops for four years on April 26. The auction was canceled due to violation of Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules and lack of proper publicity.

According to sources, the department again started preparations on May 12 for the construction of shops at the site of a police emergency centre and the Lodhran Saddar police station.

However, the PPRA again rejected the process on the basis of violation of Tenders Rules.

Now the police department has issued an advertisement for the third time, scheduling the process for May 27.

The latest advertisement only mentions the construction of shops and not their auction.

The sources said the police planned to build a market on vacant land in the area allocated for the 15 Emergency Centre and police station.

They said the PPRA website mentioned the matter as 'work' instead of open bid and the details of the shops, their numbers, size and value approval by the district assessment committee were not written.

For each shop, the bidder shall deposit a non-refundable tender fee of Rs15,000 as tender fee. Thus Rs300,000 deposit will be made to participate in the bidding and then in case of successful bid Rs1.2 million in expected.

Under the PPRA rules, five per cent of the total amount has to be deposited.

Earlier, the municipal committee had constructed 38 shops in Lodhran at a site allocated by Punjab government and traders did business there for about 40 years.

They kept paying the rent to the municipal committee, but then suddenly the construction of the shops was declared illegal and they were demolished, causing loss of millions of rupees and leaving a number of people unemployed.

A local social activist said the construction of shops should be carried out under the rules of the Punjab government after the revenue department takes its approval from the relevant authorities.

District Police Officer Hassam Bin Iqbal told The Express Tribune that the shops were being constructed for police welfare after permission from the authority.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 26^th, 2023.