PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) has canceled a tender worth millions of rupees issued by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Health Department. The court issued an order stating that the tender was an organized attempt to benefit a specific company.
According to a private TV channel report, Justices Arshad Ali and Khurshid Iqbal of the Peshawar High Court issued the order in a case about a medicine purchase tender in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
During the hearing, the petitioner’s lawyer, Shamail Ahmad Butt, told the court that Frontier Dextrose Limited had been blacklisted for supplying fake and substandard medicines.
He said giving a blacklisted company a contract to supply medicines is like playing with human lives. He added that reports from testing laboratories were submitted to prevent fake medicines, and awarding a contract to a blacklisted company for government hospitals violates basic rights.
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After hearing the arguments, the court declared the Health Department’s tender, worth millions of rupees, as non-transparent, unfair, and invalid. The court found that an important condition was deliberately removed from the tender terms to favor a specific company.
The court ordered the immediate cancellation of the tender given to the company and directed the authorities to restart the medicine purchase process according to the law.
The order further stated that transparency and fair competition must be ensured in purchases made with public funds. The court said favoring a blacklisted company is equivalent to playing with human lives.
