LANDI KOTAL, Nov 28: The government contractors in tribal areas have refused to accept new procedure of registration with the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) and said they would challenge the order of the governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa issued in this regard in the Peshawar High Court.

Haji Iqbal Afridi, president of Fata government contractors association, told Dawn after a meeting of their association in Peshawar on Tuesday the new order issued by the governor about five months back had seriously affected the ongoing development schemes worth millions of rupees in tribal areas and had also rendered hundreds of his colleagues jobless.

Mr Afridi said nearly 3,000 government contractors, who were previously registered with the local political administrations at their respective agencies, were now required to renew their registration with the PEC with an annual fee of Rs15,000.

He said under the notification the contractors could not apply for contracts exceeding Rs15 million, adding under the previous arrangement they had executed projects worth Rs100 to Rs150 million and there was no fixed limit.

Mr Afridi acknowledged that though the PEC was established in 1976 and was authorised to register all government contractors throughout the country, in tribal areas such powers lied with the political administrations. He argued that if the federal government wanted to implement the said law in tribal areas, a presidential ordinance was a constitutional requirement to do so. He also accused the PEC officials of demanding bribes from tribal contractors for their registration.

PROTEST: The Khyber transporters union on Wednesday organised a protest demonstration at Landi Kotal bazaar against the failure of local administration to recover their outstanding dues allegedly pending with logistic companies in Karachi.

Holding placards and chanting slogans against the political administration, the protesting transporters threatened to block all type of supplies to Afghanistan if their pending dues were not recovered in a week.

Shakir Afridi, a representative of the union, accused the officials of political administration of accepting bribes to deprive the transporters of their legitimate right. He said the administration failed to honour its promise of recovering the pending amount and of suspending supplies of logistic companies refusing to pay day-off payments to transporters after the Salala incident.

Local officials, when approached, said they had never committed to recover the pending amount.