OK ARA: On the petition of contractors, the Lahore High Court (LHC) has debarred local public health engineering department from allocating works to any contractor till the final adjudication of the plea.

A group of 10 government contractors of D and C class, headed by Mian Yaseen Bhutta, had filed a writ petition (13186/2017)in the court ofjustice Sayyed Muzahar Ali Akbar Naqvi against respondents -Punjab housingand physicalplanningsecretary, public health engineering department (PHED) chief engineer(north), Punjab, PHED Sahiwal circle superintending engineer and Okara division executive engineer (EXEN).

In their plea, the petitioners stated that tender notice issued by the respondent No 4 (Okara executive engineer), being without any lawful authority and violating the rules published in a newspaper on 5th April, 2017, may be set aside.

They stated that the respondent be directed to issue fresh tender notice according to the law and rules and the petitioners might also be allowed to participate in tendering process.

The petitioners also stated that the respondent be restrained from con-ducting further tendering process.

The court admitted the petition and issued notices to respondents, meanwhile debarring the respondent from allocating works to any other contractors till final adjudicating of the petition.

The D and C class contractors had moved the court after the local PHED clubbed in various contracts for small schemes, converting them into A and B category contracts, depriving smallscale contractors of their livelihood.

The department was of the view that small-scale contractors (C & D category) were unable to carry out work on various development schemes in a satisfactory way.