PESHAWAR: Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader Ziaullah Afridi has alleged that Chief Minister Pervez Khattak has awarded contract of the recently inaugurated Bus Rapid Transit project in the provincial capital to a blacklisted company.
In a statement on Thursday, lawmaker Ziaullah Afridi, who was previously affiliated with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), said that Maqbool & Company had been blacklisted. He recalled that its contractor had been arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and was released after making a plea bargain.
He said the company was blacklisted in the Lahore Orange Line and Faisalabad By-Pass road projects but the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government awarded the contract of the mega project to it. He questioned why the provincial government and its chief minister were wasting the funds raised through loans and making the entire province suffer only for his personal interest. Alleging that the chief minister had received kickbacks, he demanded an investigation as to why he was insisting on awarding the mega project to an inefficient person.
He said that on the one hand the provincial government and rulers belonging to the PTI had been claiming to hold accountability of corrupt people while on the other the PTI chief minister awarded contract to a corrupt person and blacklisted company.
