The Hynñiewtrep Youths Council (HYC) has accused the Housing Department of awarding contracts to a company called Hariana Iron Works Pvt Ltd of Kolkata to the tune of a whopping Rs 188 crore all without issuing calls for tenders first.
The HYC has been following this matter up for several months now after making the first of its accusations against the firm in June, namely that its corrugated aluminium roofing sheets distributed by the state government to poor beneficiaries in Meghalaya were of sub-standard quality. The pressure group said that the sheets Hariana Iron Works had supplied were half the standard thickness and of poor quality generally, making it insufficient for housing or animal sheds.
Through a Right to Information (RTI) request, the HYC now claims that the company was awarded massive contracts with no transparency.
Hariana Iron Works won a contract in March 2022 after its bid for Rs 17,989 per bundle of aluminium roofing sheets was the lowest from all the competitors.
However, following that, the Housing Department, according to the HYC, enhanced the original contract with an increase in the number of roofing sheets desired.
In the months and years that followed, the company was awarded four further contracts without fresh tenders between August 11, 2022 and February 6, 2024.
In a release today, the HYC said that the departmental tender committee, Housing Department and Director of Housing “unilaterally decided to issue supply orders” to Hariana Iron Works for Rs 188,88,81,484 “without calling for any Tenders or quotations.”
The whole point in tendering is to bring transparency in the allotment of contracts, increase competition and provide the best value for money in the use of public funds.
“However, in the present case, the absence of any tendering process for the supply works of such a huge amount have raised serious doubts on the transparency and integrity of the whole process,” the HYC said, adding that it constitutes a “significant deviation from established governance principles and also such a lapse underscores a systematic failure in that raises serious concern regarding transparency, accountability, governance responsiveness and the potential for corruption that requires urgent attention from the concern authority, like the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and others.”
