Education minister orders suspending incompetent engineers

Showing his concern over the slow pace of work on educational development projects, Sindh Education Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah on Wednesday ordered Education Secretary Akbar Leghari and Secretary College Education Khalid Haider Shah to replace incompetent and sluggish engineers with qualified and capable ones.

A high-level meeting was held under the chairmanship of the education minister to review the educational development projects and all the engineers concerned from across the province and other officials attended the meeting.

While briefing Ali about the projects, Additional Secretary Works Abdul Qadeer Ansari said Rs14 billion were set aside for the current financial year’s educational development projects, while Rs3.5 billion were remaining from the previous year’s budget.

He said they had to work on a total of 303 schemes, of which work on 117 schemes was under way, while the remaining 186 schemes were yet to be started. In most districts of Sindh, 62 per cent of funds had been spent to release the funds, while some districts were facing a shortage of technical and non-technical staff.

Ansari said 95 projects were supposed to get completed by June 2022, but most of the projects were feared to remain incomplete due to various reasons, adding that the performance of engineers in different districts, including Jamshoro, Tando Muhammad Khan, Tando Allahyar and Thatta, was inadequate.

He expressed his indignation and strongly rebuked the relevant engineers for the slow pace of work on the projects. He asked the secretary of education to compile a detailed report of incompetent engineers and provide him with a list of posts that had been vacant for engineers throughout the province. “I will not tolerate incompetence and sluggishness.”