After the suspension of development work in the city many contractors face cancellation of their contracts and inquiry into poor quality of civil work, it was learnt on Thursday. Sources at the city district government said that they were under instruction to issue show-cause notices to dozens of contractors who were awarded road repair and construction work by the erstwhile city district government during the past eight months.
The period of eight months has been fixed as most of the contracts were finalised in a haste in December last and in the following months. Each contract, which has a commitment exceeding Rs 50 million, would come under scrutiny in the first phase.
Sources refused to give exact figure involving these contracts, which are likely to be probed into said, "it is in billions."
They said that a similar exercise was being considered to be carried out in respect of town committees.
Liaquatabad Town Committee would be the first where rules had been reportedly flouted in awarding contracts. "There are several cases, including construction of a workshop on a nursery plot, laying of sewerage line for this workshop and construction/repair of roads in Block 4, F where about half a kilometer length of road was dug to bury sewerage pipes, water connection pipes and other underground civil work.
Sources said that the payment of the then contractors had been made in full whereas the road was still lying unrepaired/ constructed. The cost of this contract was over Rs 100 million.
Sources said that 'the City Nazim and town nazims were obliging their favourites in the award of contract.'
Giving detail of unfinished work, sources said that roads in North Nazimabad, Nazimabad, Liaquatabad main road, Jehangir Road, and in various areas of Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Landhi and Korangi present the worst examples of unfinished work.
They said that in all these works, which were unfinished, part payments had been made and contractors were being chased to complete their contractual obligations.
Referring to an earlier protest of contractors, which they had staged outside the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation at M. A. Jinnah Road, sources said they were mostly petty contractors and were engaged as sub-contractors by the big contractors. Their payment would be made only after the scrutiny of the original contract and the amount of work they might have done.
The officials in the Sindh Local Body Department said that the scrutiny of contracts was a routine matter and had nothing to do with local body elections.
However, the city government offices have been directed to stop all payments, award of all contracts approved and finalised for grant and cancel all proceedings to tender fresh civil work till further orders.