Abbottabad:
A legal notice has been delivered to the Department of Wildlife and National Parks of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, accusing it of serious irregularities, favoritism and legal violations in the recent tender process for an ecotourism project in the Ayubia National Park. The notice requires immediate corrective action.
Issued by the lawyer Malik Saeed Akhtar on behalf of the Titanic 2000 firm, the legal notice alleges that the bidding process was manipulated to benefit the “preselected and blue -eyed bidders” in collusion with the department officials.
The notice emphasizes that the department illegally avoided the Biosphere Management Committee of the UNESCO MAN Y Biosphere (MAB) program, violating international commitments. It also accuses the Department of Duplicity, opposed to the Silfe project of Ayubia for ecological reasons while supposedly progresses a similar initiative under a non -transparent application (RFP).
Citing “concrete evidence”, the notice affirms that the technical evaluation scores were arbitrarily altered after submission to favor specific bidders, breaking rule 47 of KPPRA. It also expresses strong suspicions that financial offers can be manipulated after the presentation, violating rule 34 of Kppra.
The document describes additional procedural infractions, which include: absence of the president of the Offers Evaluation Committee during the opening of offers, the illegal delegation of the decision -making authority to a single individual and marginalization of official members of the Committee, while two officials of the Department of Silvestre managed the process.
Formation of a “parallel evaluation committee”, which allegedly opened offers and showed a clear favoritism towards a bidder.
In addition, the bidders received an unrealistic deadline of six days to present environmental impact evaluations (EIA), despite the legal obligations under the Environmental Protection Law of Pakistan, 1997, which places this responsibility in the proponent of the project, not bidders. This requirement was supposedly omitted from the RFP.
There were significant delays in the evaluation process without formal communication, and it is said that the actions of the department violate the law of life and biodiversity of wildlife and biodiversity of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 2015, Kppra rules and other government laws.
Titanic 2000 has demanded that the divisional forests officer immediately rectify all legal and procedural violations. Ensure compliance with the rules of KPPRA 2014 and other environmental and acquisition laws, transfer responsibility to the officially notified committee and take corrective measures against officials involved in alleged misconduct.
The firm warned that non -compliance with the seven days would lead to legal procedures to the risk and cost of the department.
Concerns raised
In a related development, Sardar M Sabir, vice president of the Biosphere Management Committee, has written to the Secretary of Forestal and Wildlife, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government. In a two -page letter, a copy of which is available with the Express PAkGazette, raised concerns about the alleged manipulation of the offer, procedure violations and the exclusion of the committee of the entire process, despite its governance role under the UNESCO MAB program.
Sabir declared that the technical scores were altered to favor a particular bidder and alleged attempts to modify financial offers after submission. He also noted that no member of the Committee was involved in the evaluation of offers, with all the centralized authority in an individual. The absence of the conservative’s wildlife, the president of the Committee, during the opening of the offer was also highlighted.
He requested an impartial investigation into the rapes of Rigmes and the acquisition of offers, the immediate cancellation of the current bidding process and the inclusion of the biosphere management committee in all planning and future decision making.
The controversy echoes a similar uproar that surrounds the previous Ayubia Telesilla project, which also faced a violent reaction about procedural irregularities and ecological concerns. In that case, the Galiyat Development Authority (GDA) rented 110 kanales of land to the Monal Group for commercial use, which increases alarms on potential damage to the ecological balance of the park.
The state of the Ayubia National Park as a biosphere reserve designated by UNESCO underlines the need for rigorous environmental protection and transparent governance to ensure that its biodiversity and ecological integrity are preserved.
