ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) admitted a petition filed for regular hearing against the award of contract by Pakistan Post to a priavte bank for digitisation of its financial services.

Counsel for the petitioner Shumayl Aziz contended that the project in question was a public-private venture and therefore it should have been procured through the Public Private Partnership Authority (PPPA) Act 2017, not through the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority Rules 2004, as was done in the case.

The project was related to informationtechnology infrastructure and therefore its identification, planning and procurement was to be done through the PPPA Act 2017, she added.

She further argued that the ‘Expression of Interest’ published by the Ministry of Communications, violated a number of PPRA Rules, such as failure to mention the method of procurement and bid opening dates, no expert was hired to evaluate technical and financial aspects of the project, the bidding documents did not contain a structured point based criteria to evaluate the project and so on.

Further hearing in this case has been adjourned till June 18.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2020