The National Highway Authority (NHA) made a big anomaly in procurement of over rupees half a billion priced ‘LCMS with 3D Mapping Technology for Enhanced Pavement Engineering Research Analysis,’ and is set to award a tender to a specific party without analyzing specifications and lowest price offered by other three bidders.
According to document available with Daily Times, the NHA invited bids for the procurement of an innovative mechanized ‘Laser Crack Measurement System (LCMS) with 3D Mapping Technology for Enhanced Pavement Engineering Research Analysis’ and floated a tender through media on April 29, 2022, the opening date for the said tender was June 7, 2022.
But, interestingly the opening date for the quotations was extended by a senior official of NHA on the request of a bidder, till June 13, 2022.
According to details four bidders submitted their quotations for the supply of aforesaid LCMS.
Earlier, while floating the tender, NHA in order to accommodate their blue-eyed bidder, asked the bidders to upload some of the documents on the NHA website and some should be attached with their closed bids, the trick the authority used to help their favorite bidder.
Later, on July 13, 2022, the authority accepted the bid of one bidder and rejected the bids of others three bidders without opening their commercial bids and were informed in writing that their supporting documents were incomplete; either were not attached with the closed bid or were not posted on the NHA website.
As per document, repeated requests from the suppliers were filed with the authority but no grievances redressal committee was constituted, and the disqualified parties were just informed to get back their commercial bids quoted by all bidders except one, by sending their reps to the authority office on August 5, 2022.
An official said while wishing anonymity that there are questions arising that without opening all the quotations, how it is possible to analyze the specifications and price of the equipment on the basis of just a few documents posted by the bidders on the website. Rejecting the three bids, without opening quotations and qualifying only one, shows clear selection of a blue-eyed one for awarding the tender and is not a transparent processing in procurement of the said equipment as per PPRA rules.
He suggested that the NHA should avoid this embezzlement and giving huge loss to national exchequer, adding that the authority should either open all quotations to analyze the price and specifications or should re-float the tender in the media. “Otherwise the desperate bidders can mull over approaching the court of law which can delay the procurement process and hurdle the NHA development work,” he apprehended.
According to PPRA rules, it is a clear violation of rules to qualify or award a tender to a particular party without analyzing the specifications and the lowest price offered by the bidders. This is assumed that the selected bidder would have quoted such a high price out of which a huge kickback could be offered to the bidding authority.
When contacted, General Manager NHA Naeem Khattak, who is most relevant to the issue, confirmed the rejection of said bids however, he defended it at the same time, saying that disqualified companies were not up to the prescribed government standards. He also explained that there are also grievance committees in the department. “In any such cases the concerned company can approach these committees those look into the matter and give relief if any discrimination occurred due to human error or on any other reason,” he explained.
Moreover, the manager claimed, “the evaluation is yet to be done by the committees. And final selection for the contract would be made after receiving these committees’ conclusions.” He further stated that the NHA is working on merit without any bias. “If any company fulfills the criteria, we welcome them,” he recalled.
