PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa planning and development department has detected irregularities in a Rs300 million project meant to mark festivals of religious minorities, arrange conferences of interfaith harmony, and an ‘exposure’ programme for non-Muslim youths.

It recommended a “high-level” inquiry into the matter to fix responsibility for action.

The project was executed by the Auqaf, Hajj, religious and minorities affairs department in 2022 for the promotion of interfaith harmony in the province, revealed its monitoring and evaluation report prepared by the P&D department.

According to it, the project was about holding “minority youth exposure, interfaith harmony conferences, capacity building and summit, music and singing and art competitions, and adventure programmes providing the people of different faiths with a platform to express their views in front of all.”

Planning dept recommends high-level probe into matter

The report said in 2021, the Auqaf department executed an identical project at the cost of Rs40 million but the next year, the project in question was designed for Rs300 million with a cost escalation of 700 per cent.

The P&D department wondered why the Auqaf department advertised the project three times and didn’t give any reason for the withdrawal of procurement process.

“Firstly, the department floated request for proposal regarding ‘single stage, two envelopes’ method for hiring of consultancy services with the technical bids opening scheduled on 13.01.2022. Later on, the said advertisement was cancelled and another request for proposal was sent for publication by opting ‘single stage, one envelope’ bidding method and the bids opening was scheduled on 31.01.2022.

“Finally, a third request for proposal was advertised by cancelling the previous one and the bidding mode was once again altered to ‘single stage, two envelopes’ method,” the report read.

It said the final date for opening of bids on the least cost method was Jan 31, 2022, whereas the bids rejection letter was issued on March 1, 2022.

The report wondered whether the bids opening process was carried out or not.

“In case the bids opening took place, then what were its results?”

The planning and development department also complained why the technical bids were opened on March 24, 2022, before the scheduled date of March 30 even after publishing the corrigendum.

It also raised questions about the act of declaring the firm, which executed the scheme as a successful bidder despite not fulfilling the requisite passing score of 70 per cent in technical evaluation.

The department questioned the execution of the project in one year against the planned two years i.e. 2021-22 and 2022-23.

It said though the Auqaf department had already executed such a project with mentioned activities a year before the project, why much of the project time was wasted in finalising the bidders and firms selection criteria.

Sources in the P&D department told Dawn that the project was advertised multiple times prompting five firms to apply for contract but only one of them was shortlisted with the rest being declared by the department “non-responsive.”

hey also claimed that according to the laid-down procedure, once a single bidder qualified without any competition for second stage, the relevant department should advertise the project for healthy competition.

Officials of the Auqaf department were not available for comments.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2023