LAHORE: National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Lahore arrested General Manager Procurement & Contracts Muhammad Tahir Maqbool of Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) over illegal evaluation charges.
According to NAB spokesman, the accused Muhammad Tahir was associated with LWMC as GM, Procurement and Consultant, whereas, accused also worked as `Consultant’ with Rawalpindi Waste Management.
During the course of investigations it was revealed that the accused incurred colossal loss amounting to Rs 1 billion (approx) to the state kitty by malafidely preparing bidding documents having instructions to the bidder to offer price without labour cost despite the fact that labour cost was included in the cost estimates.
In this way, huge illegal benefit was granted to the contractor to the tune of Rs 1 billion approximately on account of double payment to the said contractor illegally at the cost of state exchequer.
Moreover, due to incorporation of the said discounted bid amounting to $81 million without labour cost was accepted, which otherwise should have taken place as rough cost estimates were formulated with the inclusion of labour cost.
It is also alleged that the accused M Tahir Maqbool attended the Board of Directors’ meeting held on 26th of April 2014 in which he deliberately concealed the facts from the participants of the said meeting that labour cost was included in the cost estimates of the projects, whereas, bid of M/s Albayrak had not include labour cost.
Thereby, the accused caused loss amounting to Rs 1 billion approximately to the State Exchequer by malafidely comparing cost estimates amounting to $77 million having labour cost with reduced bid price of Albayrak amounting to $81 million without inclusion of labour cost.
Earlier, NAB investigators had arrested three other senior officials in the said case from which investigations are underway.
Accused M Tahir Maqbool would be produced before an accountability court for obtaining of his physical remand.
APP