The National Highway Authority (NHA) notified the Senate Standing Committee on Communications that the cost of the Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway (M-6) project will rise due to an increase in diesel and other commodities.
Sources reported that the committee met under the chairmanship of Senator Prince Ahmed Omer Ahmedzai to discuss irregularities in the award of contracts by the National Highway Authority (NHA) under the public-private partnership (PPP) agreement for the construction of the Hyderabad-Sukkur Motorway (M-6), the Kharian-Rawalpindi Motorway Project, and contracts for toll tax stations under NHA.
Officials from the National Housing Authority (NHA) addressed the committee on the financial bid comparison for M-6 between Zahir Khan & Brothers (ZKB) and Techno-CMC-ACC.
The committee was informed that the project will be carried out in the PPP method and would take three years to complete.
Recently, the Techno consortium’s bid proposal was considered ineligible according to the RFP’s qualifying criteria. As a result, the technical review of the only qualified bidder, ZKB, was completed, and the committee unanimously decided that the Techno consortium should be furnished with the necessary documents to meet the technical eligibility criteria per the project’s bid data sheet. Their technical bid disqualification has been found wrong by the committee.
Furthermore, the committee noted that the financial bid proposal demonstrated that the Techno consortium is profitable from the government’s perspective because it imposes the least financial burden on the government.
The situation was resolved; however, the construction of the Kharian-Rawalpindi Motorway project was postponed due to a lack of relevant documents. The ministry was asked to submit information about the participating companies, bidding documents, and a comparison of their experiences.
Meanwhile, concerning NHA contracts for toll tax stations, it was discovered that four toll plazas were identified in Balochistan, two of which were on the NHA record submitted in the meeting, while the other two were not mentioned. The NHA was asked by the committee to guarantee that all toll plazas are registered.