The Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) is all set to buy 300 bulldozers from China, at a cost of Rs 3.5 billion, without any test or trial and that, too, on single-party bid system, making the entire procurement procedure dubious.
The investigations conducted by Business Recorder show that Minfal promoted its Water and Management Department (WMD) to buy 300 bulldozers from China against standard procurement procedure. The investigations indicated that some senior officials of Minfal and WMD had put the bulldozers procurement plan under the carpet two years back.
When some shortlisted parties expressed concern over the specifications made part of the tender floated in the press and took up the matter with President Pervez Musharraf, demanding investigations to establish transparency in the procurement procedure, involving three and half billion rupees of the public money.
The situation changed further, which confused the mafia, seemingly working on a half-cooked process of procurement for award of contract when one Lahore-based party/firm moved the court against the tender specifications, questioning the credibility of Minfal and WMD senior officials.
The crooked mafia felt the gravity of the situation and scrapped the entire procurement to give the impression of going to court and the President saying that they were not doing injustice with any of the short-listed parties.
But since the buying of 300 bulldozers could provide a golden opportunity to the mafia to hit back to get what it wanted out of it, the strong lobby in Minfal/WMD changed the strategy. It decided to go for buying 300 bulldozers without following any procedure, or taking into account Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) directions.
The way the mafia is finalising papers for placing the order to a Chinese firm, without fulfilling the PPRA requirements. indicates that nothing matters to the decision-makers when they make up mind to a huge consignment like bulldozers procurement.
PPRA had studied the tender document and raised serious objections over some of the clauses of the tender. PPRA''s views were that Minfal/WMD procurement procedure in the case was tailor-made and it needed to be reviewed for amendments to make sure that maximum number of interested parties should get a chance to participate in the tender.
Minfal/WMD received the directions from PPRA but, instead of implementation, they put them aside and decided to go for a single-party source which is tantamount to sheer negation of the government procurement policy. The question arises: will any authority or top level office look into the affair to take notice of who is wooing Minfal/WMD to go for buying of bulldozers Worth RS 3.5 billion, without following the least acceptable standard.
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