KARCHI: Chief Minister Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah Friday constituted a high-level committee to restructure engineering section of Works & Services Department to improve its efficiency and capacity.
He took this decision while presiding over a meeting to review development schemes of Works & Services Department. Minister Works & Services Imdad Pitafi, ACS (Dev) Mohammad Waseem, Principal Secretary Naveed Kamran Baloch, Secretary Services Aijaz Memon, Chief engineers and other concerned officers were also present on the occasion.
Briefing the chief minister, Imdad Pitafi said that the overall portfolio for 513 schemes of his department is Rs14 billion.
Additional Chief Secretary Muhammed Waseem said that out of Rs14 billion the government has released Rs10.7 billion against which utilization is 7.5 billion which comes to 71 percent utilization of the released amount.
Secretary Works Aijaz Memon told the meeting that 26 schemes of 118 kilometer road worth Rs1179.361 million have been completed by December 2016.
Under Asian Development Bank, Sindh Provincial Road Improvement Project of $197.8 million, with 13 percent Sindh government share six important roads, have been approved on which next week work would be started.
The roads include 67 km from Tando Mohammad Khan to Badin, 55km Digri-Naukot, 64km Khyber-Sanghar via Tando Adam, 63km Sanghar-Mirpurkhas via Sindhri, 36km Sheranpur-Ratodero, and 328km Thul to Kandhkot.
Murad Shah directed the minister works & services department that he would perform ground breaking ceremony of the roads on January 12 but there must be proper mobilization of machinery and staff.
“I want to see work on these six roads round the clock,” he said.
Talking about road projects lunched under Public Private Partnership (PPP), Pitafi said that 60 kilometer Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas Road has been completed. He added that construction of new bridge on River Indus at Jhirk-Mullah Katyar Section is in the final stage. It is 18.9 kilometer long project, which includes 1.7 km bridge, which was completed at Rs4.537 billion, and 49.5 km long Karachi-Thatta dual carriageway . The FWO is constructing this 49.5 km at a cost of Rs8.85 million.
The chief minister observed that the building side of the works department is very weak that’s why the buildings they have constructed of fisheries department and others are not in good conditions.
The minister works & Services told the chief minister that there were six chief engineers, 42 executive engineers and 100 executive engineers and other staff. On this the chief minister said that there must be rationalization of the engineering staff.
He constituted a committee under ACS (Dev) M Waseem, secretary works Aijaz Memon, Secretary Finance Hassan Naqvi, one chief engineer and one experts would work out a plan to restructure the engineering side of the department. This must be submitted within a week so that the works department could be made more efficient and strong to build Sindh.
