LAHORE, Sept 15: A Chinese manufacturer of electricity meters has written a letter to the prime minister, alleging that Wapda unfairly knocked him out of contention for the supply of meters in July.

A copy of the letter has also been sent by the company to the Auditor General of Pakistan.

Ningbo Success was disqualified by Wapda for being technically and commercially non-responsive and the contract for the supply of 1.25 million single phase meters was awarded to four local firms.

The letter, a copy of which was made available to Dawn here on Monday, claims that the condition for the bidders to have five years’ experience of making Pakistan-specific meters was aimed at favouring local companies. It threw all the Chinese bidders out of the competition despite the fact that some of them are in the business for over five years, and have been supplying meters to other countries in the region.

Pleading its own case, the manufacturer claims that it was the lowest bidder and had offered Rs650 per unit. Wapda’s Central Contract Cell had also called for the re-evaluation of the report of its technical committee that resulted in the disqualification of the Chinese bidders.

Wapda had negotiated the price with the local manufacturers at Rs805 per unit, allowing them a 25 per cent price preference over foreign firms under SRO No: 827 (1/2001) as amended 660 (1/2002).

The Chinese company claims that Wapda had scrapped the international tender by disqualifying them and turned it into, what it called, a negotiated deal and caused loss to consumers.