PRIME Minister Shehbaz Sharif has done well by constituting a fact-finding committee to probe multiple allegations against employees of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA), including payment of honorarium out of the World Bank funded project, EPADS (E-Pak Acquisition and Disposal System). The head of the authority has contested these allegations claiming that the PM Office has been approached by its employees because of their internal tussle but hopefully the inquiry by the Prime Minister’s Inspection Commission would bring facts to the fore.
The PPRA was established with the lofty objectives of incorporating transparency, fairness, value for money, economy and efficiency into public procurement. The primary aim was to address growing complaints and instances of corruption in the award of contracts for public procurements. In this backdrop, it is shocking that allegations of misuse of the World Bank loan and allegations of corruption against its officials in procurement cases causing loss of billions of rupees to the public kitty and committing fraud, tampering, bogus documentation and blackmailing. Honorarium is routinely paid to the Government servants for the extra work they do but if proved correct it would be misuse of the highest order to have paid the honorarium worth millions of rupees out of the WB loans that comes at heavy cost to the people of Pakistan. Similarly, the allegation that the authority mostly decides complaints regarding procurement in favour of contractors because of palm-greasing also raises serious questions about the very justification for such an institution. We, therefore, hope that a fast track and transparent investigation of the allegations would be done and prompt action taken in case of any wrongdoing to save the reputation of this otherwise autonomous body.
