The development work at Park Enclave will start after 21 days, Capital Development Authority (CDA) Chairman Farkhand Iqbal said.
“I am making a commitment that the development work at Park Enclave will start exactly after 21 days and there will be no further delay,” he said while talking to ‘The News’.
He disclosed that he has decided to cancel the previous tendering process, which started in July last year, and now the contract for development work would be awarded by calling open tenders. “The previous tendering will stand cancelled. The contract will now be given through open tendering basis to clear all doubts with regard to transparency,” he said.
The CDA chairman claimed that he would call a meeting of CDA board members on Tuesday to formally cancel the ongoing tendering and calling open tenders.
The Capital Development Authority (CDA), when Imtiaz Inayat Illahi was its chairman, opened the Park Enclave which the civic body claimed to be an environment-friendly model housing project in the heart of the federal capital consisting of 700 houses in Phase-I and another 600 houses in Phase-II equipped with state-of-the-art facilities in July last year.
The tendering process became controversial when the Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) raised objections over the exercise and wrote a letter to the CDA in the first week of January 2012. TIP informed the CDA management about serious objections raised by three out of four short-listed contractors to prequalification criteria set for awarding the Rs3 billion contract for infrastructure work at the Park Enclave.
According to the TIP letter, the CDA was asked to form a committee to probe into the objections raised by Ghulam Rasool and Company, Mohammad Ayub Brothers and Matracon.
The CDA was asked to constitute a committee, comprising odd number of persons, with proper powers and authorisations, to address the complaints of bidders according to the requirement of Rule-48 of Pakistan Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA), and the committee shall investigate and decide upon the complaint within 15 days of the receipt of the complaint.
In response, the CDA chairman constituted a committee to look into the complaint. However now it has been decided to remove grievances of all stakeholders once and for all by awarding contract through open tenders.
The development of the sector was further delayed when a handful of affected people disturbed the ground-breaking of Park Enclave at the site in the third week of February which created unrest among allottees that the project would not be completed in time.
CDA Member Estate Khalid Mirza, when contacted by ‘The News,’ said that all issues relating to acquisition of land have been resolved. “The remaining amount of Rs7.5 million would be paid to the affected people to clear all dues in a couple of days,” the official said.
The civic body, which is facing financial crisis, was expected to earn around Rs5 billion from sale of plots measuring 500 square yards each.
