Asad Umar asks Bilawal to discharge responsibilities

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar has said that the Centre continues to bear the burden of responsibilities that was under its domain prior to enactment of the 18th Constitutional amendments and 7th NFC Award despite transferring a major chunk of resources to the provinces.

“The revenue sharing formula of NFC Award needs to be discussed in detail as the provinces should take full responsibility after getting major chunk of revenue share but Bilawal Zardari, on the other hand, is again demanding that the Centre should provide more financial assistance to mitigate effects of flooding. So the question arises when it’s your domain, why you don’t discharge your responsibility,” Asad Umar said in an exclusive talk with The News here at his office on Thursday.

The minister was responding to a query of The News why the provinces were not utilising their own resources after the 18th Amendment and NFC Award in the context of the recent Karachi Package. The minister said that he was 100 percent in agreement that the Centre continued to bear the burden of responsibilities just on the pattern prior to 18th Constitutional Amendment and 7th NFC Award despite transferring resources to the federating units. It’s happening in case of all the four provinces as it’s not related to one province only as the vertical development projects were being financed by the Centre such as NCHD, health and human development projects etc.

He said that the earlier Karachi package of Rs162 billion was under implementation. The Special Freight Corridor was under implementation. The Green Line project already utilised a major chunk of allocated funding. Some other projects faced difficulties because of lack of proper coordination and the lesson was learnt that without placing all stakeholders at one page nothing could succeed.

About implementation on Karachi package, the minister replied that in order to resolve coordination problem, the government decided to place three tier mechanism as first six-member committee notified comprising Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah and two provincial ministers Saeed Ghani and Nasir Shah while from the federal government he himself (Asad Umar), Ali Zaidi and Aminul Haq would represent Centre. He said that another committee would be constituted under chairmanship of Sindh CM and it would be represented by all the stakeholders including civil and armed forces. Thirdly, a monitoring and implementation committee would be established to ensure on ground work on different development projects.

When asked about his responsibilities under portfolio of special indicatives, Asad Umar said that Prime Minister Imran Khan had granted responsibility of developing mineral sector in Balochistan as company was established to explore possibilities of mineral sector. Secondly, the development projects related to federal capital such as provision of 275 million gallon of water from Ghazi Broths and Kanpur Dam and third youth affairs related issues were handed over to him under the domain of special initiatives. Last but not the least, the handling of coronavirus, he said, was also handed over to him and in the last 8 months it took most of the time under NCOC.

He said that Islamabad Metro Project from Peshawar Mor to New Islamabad International Airport would become operational by mid of next year 2021 as the major stumbling block of Islamabad Mass Transit Authority was put in place after getting approval of the cabinet. When this project was approved, it was written that Punjab would run this project but it refused to run it. Now this stumbling block had been removed and now it would become operational till mid of next year.