Senate panel grills NHA for dubious contract award

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Communications grilled the National Highways Authority (NHA) for awarding contract to a company of dubious record which was already disqualified by the NHA for not fulfilling its contractual obligations in another project.

In a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Communications presided over by Chairman Committee Mian Pervaiz Rasheed, Senator Saifullah Abro asked NHA Chairman Muhammad Shehryar Sultan that how come the NHA awarded contract for the construction of portion of Rajanpur-Dera Ghazi Khan motorway project N-55 to a company named, NXCC, which was already disqualified by it for not fulfilling its contractual obligations in the Lodhran-Multan Motorway, N5 North project.

He said the total estimated cost of this project was Rs15 billion, out of which, the NHA paid Rs8 billion to this company but so far it has done merely eight percent of the construction work.

The NHA chairman said this case is already before the court which appointed the arbitrator on whose recommendation the court awarded this contract to NXCC.

On which, Senator Kamil Ali Agha alleged that the arbitrator he is talking about worked as legal consultant of this company as well and this make this whole legal process dubious and questionable.

Saifullah Abro said that as chairman when he took up this matter in the Economic Affairs Division, the NHA issued a press release that the committee tried to pressurise them for its vested interest.

The NHA chairman assured the committee that the NXCC will not be allowed to expedite work on the Rajanpur-Dera Ghazi Khan project without addressing the concerns raised by the committee.

However, the chairman committee expressed dissatisfaction over the reasoning of the NHA chairman and decided to form a sub-committee to look into this matter.

Regarding M-6 Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway land acquisition scam, the NHA chairman said that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was already investigating the Rs5.8 billion corruption case and has already recovered Rs1.2 billion and trying its level best to arrest absconding culprits to recover the remaining amount.

However, he said the Sindh government has asked the NHA not to stop work because of shortage of funds as it will provide required funding and once NAB recovered the embezzled amount, the NHA should return it to them.

Senior journalist and anchor person Rana Abrar as a special invitee raised the issue of lukewarm progress on Rajanpur-DG Khan Motorway project. He said in 2020,the estimated cost of this project was Rs33.9 billion which has now escalated to Rs63.1 billion, showing and increase of Rs29.2 billion.

He said the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is also partially funding the project but strangely neither the Ministry of Finance nor the ADB have raised objection on this delay which has resulted in doubling of the cost of this project. He said merely Rs1.5 billion have been spent on this project. He said depleted condition of the road was causing massive traffic congestion and has made the lives of the common man miserable.

The NHA chairman assured the committee that he will try his level best to speed-up work on the project.

The NHA chairman said that right now, the NHA was working on Rs2,200 billion worth of roads and highways’ projects. He said the NHA requested funds for 161 schemes but the federal government approved funds of Rs227 billion for only 105 projects.

The NHA official informed the committee that through toll tax and other sources, the NHA earned Rs64.8 billion in FY25 compared to Rs32 billion in FY24. Parvaiz Rasheed said that the NHA doubled the toll tax but its service hasnot improved. The NHA chairman said the toll tax was increased after a gap of six years but still the NHA increased the toll fee quarterly to pass on the increase, gradually.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025