ISLAMABAD    -    Senate Standing Committee on Communications on Friday expressed reservations over the tendering process of the Hyderabad-Sukkur Motorway project and decided to write a letter to the prime minister and Senate chairman to lodge a formal inquiry in this regard. A 306-kilometre long Hyderabad-Sukkur Motorway is the last missing link of the 1522km long Peshawar to Karachi motorway route, which could not be awarded besides several attempts of the road authority on one pretext or another in the last couple of years. After a yearlong deliberations upon the last attempt of the National Highways Authority to built this motorway on public private partnership mode, its supreme decision making body, National Highway Council finally gave a green signal to award the project to M/s Techno-CMC-ACC, which remained successful bidder by ousting M/s ZKB. However, the project came under criticism from some lawmakers. Senator Saifullah Abro of PTI alleged that first the bid evaluation committee had declared M/s Techno-CMC-ACC as technically unfit for the project, but later a grievances redressal committee has overruled that reasons and cleared the contractor for this project. NHA chairman apprised the committee that the project was of high value and the government decided to initiate it through Public Private Partnership and an Italian construction company in collaboration with local firms have successfully won the contract. He informed the committee that the bid submitted by this Italian company is highly optimistic as it has offered to build a motorway worth Rs 250 billion by demanding only Rs 9.5 billion as viability gap funding from the government. He said after due diligence on multiple forums, the NHA is finally going to award this project to the successful bidder. It is pertinent to mention here that a contractor M/s Zahir Khan & Brothers (ZKB) remained unsuccessful to get this project and the same is owned by the father and brothers of Senator Ahmed Khan. Abro maintained that the documents submitted by the Italian company were fake and income tax certificate indicates that the company is in import and export business. The Grievance Redressal Committee Chairman Ikram us Saqlain Haider failed to satisfy the forum over his decision to declare the company as technically fit for the project. Prince Ahmed Omer Ahmedzai, Chairman of the Committee decided to write a letter to the Senate chairman and prime minister about the alleged irregularities spotted in the award of the project and requested stern action against the persons involved in the process.