LAHORE: For the last three months or so, a ‘catering cartel’ has been hampering the Pakistan Railways efforts to earn more and to improve on-board dining facilities in 12 mail and express trains.

“Some contractors have cartelized the catering business (in the railways) by not allowing new entrants in the fresh bidding process,” a PR commercial wing official told this reporter on Sunday.

Tenders were invited in September last year for licencing of dining cars and kitchen portions attached with the trains running on Peshawar-Rawalpindi-Lahore-Faisalabad-Quetta-Karachi routes besides a restaurant at Lahore station.

The validity of licence was for one year and extendable to another term on 10 per cent increase for Khyber Mail, Awam Express (running between Karachi and Peshawar), Tezgam (Karachi and Rawalpindi), Karakoram and Karachi expresses (Lahore and Karachi), Jaffer Express (Quetta and Rawalpindi), Quetta Express (Quetta and Peshawar), Millat Express (Karachi and Faisalabad), four rail cars running between Lahore and Rawalpindi besides restaurant No 2 at the Lahore railway station’s platform No 4.

The bid documents were purchased by M/s Central Rail Service, A&A Enterprises, Baber Hayat & Co and Pakistan Railways Advisory and Consultancy Services (PRACS), a subsidiary of the PR. “Since only M/s PRACS had submitted bid documents by the last date on Oct 22 last year, it could not be considered under PPRA rules,” said the official who sought anonymity.

The contractors already operating dining cars and kitchen portions had submitted an appeal to the general manager (operations) for revision of financial terms and conditions terming the same much enhanced compared to the existing ones.

The appeal was rejected by the GM (Operations) who fixed Oct 20, 2013, for submission of fresh bid documents. “This time no one turned up even to purchase bid documents and the authorities had to allow the existing contractors to continue at the same old rates,” said the official.