KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has constituted a high level committee to restructure engineering side of Works & Services Department (W&SD) to improve its efficiency and capacity.
He took this decision while presiding over a meeting to review development schemes of W&SD, said a statement issued here on Friday.
The meeting was attended by Minister Works & Services Imdad Pitafi, ACS (Dev) Mohammad Waseem, Principal Secretary Naveed Kamran Baloch, Secretary Services Aijaz Memon, Chief engineers and other concerned officers.
Briefing the Chief Minister, the Minister Works & Services Imdad Pitafi said that the over all portfolio for 513 schemes of his department is Rs 14 billion. Out of 513 schemes 438, including eight of buildings are on-going and 75 new. Additional Chief Secretary M. Waseem said that out of Rs14 billion the government has released Rs 10.7 billion against which utilization is Rs 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. They include Tando Mohammad Khan to Badin 67 km, Digri-Naukot 55 km, Khyber-Sanghar via Tando Adam 64, Sanghar-Mirpurkhas via Sindhri 63 km, Sheranpur-Ratodero 36 km, and Thul to Kandhkot 328 km. Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah directed Imdad Pitafi that he would perform ground breaking ceremony of the roads on January 12 but there must proper mobilization of machinery and staff. 'I want to see work on these six roads round the clock,' he said.
Talking about road projects launched under Public Private partnership (PPP) Pitafi said that 60 kilometer Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas Road has been completed. Adding that construction of new bridge on River Indus at Jhirk-Mullah Katyar Section in final stage.
It is 18.9 kilometer long project, including 1.7 km bridge completed at Rs4.537 billion and 49.5 km long Karachi-Thatta dual carriageway are in progress.
The FWO is constructing this 49.5 km at a cost of Rs 8.85 million.
The other projects initiated include 30.6 km dualisation of Hyderabad-Tando Mohamamd Khan, Ghotki-Kandhkot Bridge project, has 30.2 kms with 2.1 km long bridge. construction of M9-N5 20 km Link Road project. This project would be launched for investor solicitation in February 2017.
The chief minister observed that the building side of the S&WD 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 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 expert would work out a plan to restructure the engineering side of the department. This must be submitted within a week so that Works department could be made more efficient and strong to build Sindh.
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