LAHORE: Barely three months after its relaunch under the public-private partnership (PPP), the country’s only cargo express train has stopped running between Lahore’s Badami Bagh and Karachi Cantonment stations.

While the contractors claim the operation of the 501-Up/502-Down train was suspended without giving any reason, railways officials maintain that Cargo Express was stopped because the contract period expired on Feb 28.

“The 26-bogie Cargo Express was successfully running between Karachi Cantonment and Badami Bagh stations of Lahore six days a week while contributing Rs3.6 million daily to Pakistan Railways (PR) revenue,” said a contractor who claims to have been ‘badly affected because of sudden suspension’.

On Nov 24, 2014, Minister for Railways Khwaja Saad Rafique had inaugurated resumption of the first Cargo Express (501-Up/502-Down) train after a lapse of more than three years.

Meanwhile, efforts by the PR administration to attract contractors for outsourcing another four cargo express trains could not bear fruit because of hard conditions placed in the bid documents.

PR’s marketing wing on Dec 16, 2014 invited tenders through advertisements in national dailies to outsource four cargo express trains under PPP from Faisalabad, Sialkot, Peshawar and Sukkur to Karachi.

The bidding documents under single-stage two-envelop procedure of Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules were to be submitted by 10:30am on Dec 30. The technical documents were to be opened half an hour later in the presence of contractors or their designated representatives.

Since the bid documents could not be issued till Dec 22, the interested parties asked the PR administration to extend the submission date. On Dec 28, 2014, PR extended the bid submission date to Jan 12, 2015.

Some 42 or so private parties purchased the bid documents, but only four bidders came to submit their proposals owing to ‘unfavourable and harsh’ terms and conditions, forcing the PR to again extend the submission date till Jan 29.

Now all interested parties have been asked to get revised bid documents that would be available for Rs5,000 for each set till Jan 28.

However, contractors alleged that the PR administration is violating rules of PPRA Ordinance. Quoting Rule 13 (1), a contractor said that under no circumstances, the response time should not be less than 15 days for national competitive bidding and 30 days for international competitive bidding from the date of publication of an advertisement or notice.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2015

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