CM wants work expedited on foreign-funded projects

PESHAWAR: Caretaker Chief Minister Muhammad Azam Khan on Tuesday directed the quarters concerned to expedite the pace of work on foreign-funded development projects to ensure their timely completion.

An official handout said that he was chairing a meeting to discuss and review progress on the foreign-funded development projects in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. KP Chief Secretary Nadeem Aslam Chaudhary, Additional Chief Secretary Zubair Asghar Qureshi, administrative secretaries of the departments concerned and other high-ups attended the meeting. The participants were briefed about the progress on the foreign-funded development projects and other related matters.

The chief minister directed the administrative secretaries to regularly review the progress on foreign-funded projects under their respective departments so that bottlenecks hindering the implementation of the projects could be removed.

Azam Khan termed the Kurram Tangi Water Resource Development Project of vital importance and directed the quarters concerned to convene a special meeting of all relevant authorities to find a way forward to accelerate pace of work on this important project. He directed the officials to pay attention to the completion of infrastructure development-related projects in the merged areas and said that timely completion of those projects would help facilitate the local people.

The meeting was told that under the foreign-funded development portfolio, a total of 66 development projects worth Rs849 billion were reflected in the Annual Development Programme of the current financial year. The meeting was informed that Rs114 billion had been allocated for the aforementioned projects in the current fiscal year, out of which Rs10.9 billion had been released so far.

Briefing the meeting about the details of development projects in the various sectors, it was informed that five projects were reflected in agriculture sector, three in public health engineering, four projects in the elementary and secondary education and seven projects in the sector of power and energy, four projects in the health, three projects in local government, five in road communication, two in tourism, three projects in irrigation, one project each in forests, home, industries and labour whereas nineteen in multi-sectoral development sector.