ISLAMABAD: Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday expressed concern over bogus guarantee by the contractor from insurance company and directed to ensure guarantee bond of contractors from banks.
The PAC met here under the chairmanship of Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah with its members including Syed Naveed Qamar, Sardar Aashiq Hussain Gopang, Sahibzada Nazeer Sultan, Mehmood Khan Achakzei, Shahida Akhtar Ali, Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed, Dr Darshan, Muhammad Junaid Anwar Chaudhry and discussed the audit paras of the Ministry of Communications, National Highway Authority (NHA) for the year 2010-11.
The Chairman, Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah said that mostly contractors provide guarantee of insurance companies that always found bogus and already direction had been given by the PAC in this regard that only bank guarantee is valid and should be acceptable.
The audit officials briefed the committee that a guarantee of Rs 163.208 million was given by the contractor M/s Sultan Mehmood and company for construction work of approach road to Indus River bridge, connecting Larkana and Khairpur.
He said that payments to the contractor were made without valid performance bonds and no recovery on this account was made that resulted in non recovery of Rs 1.632 million.
The Secretary Communication, Shahid Ashraf Tarrar said that construction company had been black-listed and a facts-finding inquiry was also initiated in this regard and contractor had filed a case in the Sindh High Court which is under proceeding.
Syed Naveed Qamar said that contractors appear in bids with different names adding that a mechanism should be adopted to stop participation of default contractors in future.
The meeting was further briefed that in another project the NHA hadawarded irregular consultancy of Rs 19.488 million without calling tender in violation of Pubic Procurement Regulatory Authority Rules 2004 and NHA code.
He directed the NHA that take up the matter of regularization with the ministry of Finance.
The audit officials briefed about the audit para in which an unjustified payment of Rs 59.648 million was made to the contractor as bonus for extended period of contract.
The committee expressed concern over performance of the NHA and said that contractor has to pay back bonus amount as it was given after favor to the contractor adding that due to negligence of the department extension in contract was given, and ordered to inquire the matter.
