NA body suggests termination of contract on allotment of PR land

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly’s Special Committee on Railways has recommended the termination of a contract pertaining to the allotment of Pakistan Railways’ land to the Royal Palm Golf and Country Club on the grounds that the lessee did not get the defaults regularised in accordance with the provisions of the contract.

The special committee’s report, which was presented in the House on Friday, said the lessee had failed to make payments that were due to the Pakistan Railways. It further said the agreement had no legal or moral standing as it had been achieved through deceit, misrepresentation, fraud and cheating and should be terminated accordingly.

The report prepared by a 20-member parliamentary committee formed by the assembly speaker in 2008 said that if the value of the PR land was accepted as Rs 3.2 billion approximately, even then the PR would suffer a loss of Rs 25 billion because the rent had not been calculated according to the Railways’ Code of Engineering. The code provides that the annual rent should not be less than 15 percent of the market value of the land.

Declaring the contract detrimental to public interest, the committee recommended that the contract should be terminated and all the dues and losses recovered from the lessee with interest.

Proceedings: It further recommended that legal proceedings be initiated against former railways minister Lt General ® Javed Ashraf Qazi, former railways secretaries/chairmen Lt General ® Saeeduz Zafar and Khurshid Alam Khan; and former PR general manager Major General ® Hamid Hassan Butt.

The committee further recommended that all members of the Executive Committee should be prosecuted. The committee comprised the railways secretary, GM (Operations), GM (S&M) and GM (Finance).

The special committee further recommended that members of the committee, which examined pre-qualification criteria, should also be brought to justice. It recommended that properties of all these people be confiscated and auctioned to cover the losses the national exchequer had suffered due to negligence, connivance and disregard to public interest.