A sub-committee of Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that met here with its convenor Shahida Akhtar Ali took up the audit briefs pertaining to CDA, which revealed that CDA officials had set up their own companies to get millions of rupees contracts. Mian Manan, a member of the committee said that rampant corruption in going unnoticed in the civic body as its officials had set up their own companies and get mega projects in the so-called bidding processing instead of giving level playing filed to all the contractors.
"The CDA officials have set up their own contracting companies and big projects are awarded to them despite the fact these companies do not fulfil the set criteria for award of the contract, which is quite unfortunate," he lamented. The committee reviewed the audit paras for 2010-11 during which the CDA had constructed Jinnah Avenue underpass and flyover. The audit officials told the committee that estimated price in the PC-1 for the flyover was Rs 990 million but it went up to Rs 1, 670 million, and the account of the projects is yet to be closed.
The audit officials also said that massive irregularities to the tune of billions of rupees had been pointed out but CDA had only recovered Rs 3 million, which is nothing but peanut. The committee directed the CDA to include a member of PAC to probe into the matter why the pace of recovery is at slow pace despite massive corruption.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017