Passport crisis: IHC orders in-camera briefing from US company

Rival company claims contract awarded to US firm violated PPRA rules.

ISLAMABAD:

Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday ordered a US firm to give an in-camera briefing after it was awarded a lamination paper contract for Machine Readable Passports (MRP) by the interior ministry.   

The Ministry has awarded a contract for supply of laminate paper to Security Laminates Opsec, a US Company which was challenged by Reliance Company on April 4 2013 citing that the ministry had violated Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules.

Advocate Salman Akram Raja representing Reliance Company maintained that the ministry did not carry out a complete laboratory test of lamination sheets of this firm. He argued that security features, which are the most important part of the MRP, were ignored by the ministry and project director for MRP had manipulated the bidding process to favour the US Company.



He requested the court to grant a stay order.  However, Justice Siddiqui did not agree and ordered the representative of Opsec Company to give an in-camera briefing on its security features on June 3.

It is noted that earlier Immigration and Passports Director General (DG) Zulfiqar Ahmed Cheema, had blamed the former interior minister Rehman Malik for delaying the passport issuance process because he wanted to award the lamination paper project to Hologram Company. According to him, due to pressure from senior officials and media, Malik was unable to award the contract to his desired company

Published in The Express Tribune, May 29^th, 2013.