PESHAWAR: The Khyber Contractors Association on Wednesday announced that its members would boycott the bidding for development project contract in Khyber Agency.

It warned that if the Xen of the public health engineering dep artment was not removed immediately, the contractors would stop the execution of all ongoing schemes.

Khyber Contractors Association president Badshah Khan Afridi told reporters at the Peshawar Press Club that PHE department Xen Adnan had kept all tenders pending forcing contractors to pay him the unlawful five per cent commission.

He said whenever a tender was floated, the Xen kept it pending unless he got `kickbacks`from companies for the contract`s award.

`We are ready to pay the commission fixed by the government in different contracts but the Xen has started exploiting the situa-tion to serve own interest, which is not acceptable to us,` he said.

He said if contractors started paying additional commissions, they would become bankrupt and would be unable to run their business.

Accompanied by other officebearers of the association, including Suhbat Khan Afridi, Mohammad Younis, Gul Ahmad and Siddique Afridi, the association president said the contractors had begun boycotting the contract bidding process from June 7, 2017, and would not take part in the process unless their demands were met.

Suhbat Khan said the people of Khyber Agency had suf fered a lot due to militancy and military operations against militants during the last many years and if development work in different sectors was not initiated, the local residents would face trouble.

He said the only reason for delay in the uplift schemes` execution was the PHE department`s Xen, who was using delaying tactics in the award of contracts.