Transparency director nominated to law reform committee

The Planning and Development Board chairman will be the convener.

LAHORE:

The provincial government has nominated Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) Director Adil Gillani as a member of a high powered committee on the Punjab Procurement Regulatory Act and the Punjab Public Private Partnership Act.

According to a notification issued by the chief minister’s secretariat on November 30, the Planning and Development Board chairman will be convener of the committee.

Its other members include the additional chief secretary for energy, the law and parliamentary affairs secretary, the mines and minerals secretary, the Lahore commissioner, the Punjab Board of Information Technology vice commissioner, the Punjab Procurement Regulatory Authority managing director, and the Lahore Development Authority director general.

“The committee can co-opt any expert or official for its assistance,” the notification said.

It said the committee would review the relevant legislations and propose amendments in relevant acts and rules to make procurements more efficient.

It would also reform the roles on unsolicited bids and their application to the public-private partnership projects in which government’s equity is involved.

The committee would also recommend incorporation of consultancy rules into the PPRA rules, hiring of public entities as single-source consultant and simplification of process in the Punjab Private Partnership Act and cutting the time involved in these procecures.

The chief minister has directed the committee to submit its recommendations within two weeks.

Earlier, Gillani called on the chief minister on November 30 and shared the TI report on Pakistan on Corruption Perception Index for 2013, an official in the chief minister’s secretariat told The Express Tribune.

Gillani told the chief minister that the TIP advised governments on transparency in public matters. “We have been represented on Sindh government’s PPRA Sindh government for the last five years,” he said. PPP leader Shaukat Basra said “it is terrible to learn that the head of a watchdog organisation has been made the member of a government committee.”

“This has put a question mark on the neutrality and credibility of the organisation,” he said.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Punjab president Ejaz Chaudhary said the PTI had already made public its apprehensions regarding Gillani’s tilt towards the PML-N.

“His nomination to the government’s committee on procurement has confirmed that,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6^th, 2013.