A committee to restructure and increase the capacity of the Works and Services Department’s engineering section was constituted by Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Friday.
A work plan for its reorganisation was sought from the committee within a week.
The committee comprised Additional Chief Secretary (Development) M Waseem, Secretary W&S Aijaz Memon, Secretary Finance Hassan Naqvi, a chief engineer and a development expert to work out a plan to restructure the engineering department.
Presiding over a meeting held to review the department’s development schemes, Murad had observed that the department, of the W&S, looking over constructions of buildings was inefficient since buildings constructed for the fisheries department were in a poor state.
The minister for works and services, Imdad Pitafi, had informed the CM that there were six chief engineers, 42 executive engineers and 100 chief executive engineers and other staff in the engineering department, on which the CM replied that the engineering section’s staff needed to be reorganised.
The CM was earlier during briefings of the development schemes informed by Pitafi that his department was looking over 513 schemes. Out of the 513 schemes, 438 had been introduced before while 75 were new.
Additional Chief Secretary (Development), M. Waseem, said out of the W&S’ development budget of Rs14 billion, the government had released Rs10.7 billion, out of which Rs7.5 billion had been utilised; which meant that 71 percent of the released amount had been used up.
Secretary W&S Aijaz Memon informed the meeting that construction of 26, 118 kilometre roads worth Rs1.1 billion was completed by December 2016.
Under the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and provincial government’s Sindh Provincial Road Improvement Project, worth $198 million with 13 percent share of the Sindh government, plans for six important roads had been approved. Construction on the roads was scheduled to start next week, the secretary claimed.
The six routes included the 67km road from Tando Mohammad Khan to Badin, 55km road from Digri to Naukot, 64km road from Khyber to Sanghar via Tando Adam, 63km road from Sanghar to Mirpurkhas through Sindhri, 36km road from Sheranpur to Ratodero and 328km road from Thul to Kandhkot.
CM Murad directed the W&S minister that he would perform the ground breaking ceremony for the roads on January 12, provided that proper machinery and staff were mobilised. “I want work on these roads to be carried out round the clock,” he was reported to have said.
Talking about road projects launched under the public-private partnership model, Pitafi informed that construction of 60km Hyderabad to Mirpurkhas road had been completed, while the construction of a new bridge over River Indus at the Jhirk-Mullah Katyar section was in its final stages.
The 18.9km long route, including 1.7kms of the bridge were completed at a cost of Rs4.5billion.
He further informed that construction on the 49.5km long Karachi to Thatta dual carriageway was in progress; the FWO was constructing it at an estimated cost of Rs8.85 million.
Other projects initiated under the model included the 30.6km road from Hyderabad to Tando Mohamamd Khan, the 30.2km long Ghotki to Kandhkot route with a 2.1km long bridge, and the construction of the M9 to N5 20km Link Road project – investors for this projected would be invited in February 2017.
The meeting was also attended by Principal Secretary Naveed Kamran Baloch, chief engineers and other concerned officials.
