ISLAMABAD, May 19: The city managers are trying to cover up Lakeview Park entry fee scam involving millions of rupees, Dawn has learnt.

Interestingly, a departmental inquiry has found some senior officials of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) involved in the scam, and the report has been lying on the table of the authority’s chairman for a month, but no action has been taken on it so far.

The CDA’s deputy director general (environment), Iftikhar Awan, who was the inquiry officer, told Dawn: “I completed the inquiry a month ago and submitted the report to the chairman’s office.”

A document said the city managers had signed an agreement with a contractor, Wahab Gul, in April 2011 but it became effective from November 23, 2011.

However, Gul started collecting entry fee from hundreds of visitors from April 2011 but paid nothing to the CDA. He had won the contract on the highest bid of Rs27 million in an open auction.

The sources said the inquiry officer had pointed out severe irregularities and corrupt practices in award of the contract and named the officials who were involved in the scam.

Issuing orders of the inquiry, CDA’s Member Environment Mian Waheeduddin had claimed that he would not let the officials involved in the corrupt practices go scot-free .

According to the inquiry officer, directors, deputy directors, park managers and other officials were involved in the scandal.
The CDA had invited bids for auctioning one-year contract of the entry fee collection last year.

As per terms and conditions of the auction, the highest bidder paid 25 per cent of the total bid amounting to Rs6.75 million to the authority on April 18, 2011.

The contractor did not pay rest of the amount to the authority which was to be paid in three quarterly installments.

However, he completed almost one year of the contract and collected millions of rupees in entry free without paying the remaining dues to the civic body.