KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Sunday urged the Federation to bring the province at par with other provinces in the federal Public Sector Development Program (PSDP).
“Sindh deserves more than that in the federal PSDP, we have taken up the issue with the incumbent federal government,” he said at the post-budget press conference held at Sindh Assembly on Sunday.
Shah said the Sindh government has decided to spend more than Rs700 billion on development projects in 2023-24.
The total size of the budget of Sindh is Rs 2.25 trillion. Four major components of the Sindh budget include education, health, law and order and local bodies.
Rich will be taxed: Rs2.2trn Sindh budget unveiled
Without naming the PTI, he alleged that the federal government did injustice to Sindh over the last first three and half years. “Some progress has been made in the last one and a half years in this regard; however, there is still a need to do a lot in this matter.”
He said Rs 127 billion allocation has been approved for CLICK Project which will be executed by the local government.
The Chief Minister said that in the budget, Rs 35 billion have been earmarked for education, Rs 25 billion for irrigation, Rs 25 billion for housing, Rs 182 billion have been allocated under schemes Karachi finance allocation.
He said Rs 52 billion for K-IV scheme is pending with the federal government for approval. Rs 4 billion rupees are being given to Indus Hospital. Grants are also being given for to JPMC, and NICVD.
He said Sindh government is working on development projects in Karachi. Works worth Rs 56 billion have already been completed in Karachi while development schemes worth more than Rs 200 billion are in progress.
He said that there is a record budget of Rs 2.25 trillion in which more funds have been allocated for education, health, law and order and municipalities. “We have received around $2 billion dollars from external sources for the issue of floods, managing such a huge amount in 4 months is a big achievement.”
He said that there is a danger of a typhoon, it is being said that there will be rains in Karachi, when this storm reaches the coast, the wind speed will be up to 89 km per hour. Instructions have been issued to concerned departments in this regard.
The Karachi Hub Water Canal project is in the budding process, which is a Rs 24 billion project. Waste water treatment is worth Rs 125 billion project, waste water treatment plant 1 is Rs 60 billion, Jinnah Hospital Safety and Security Project is Rs 2billion scheme, and Marble City project costs Rs 5 billion.
In next year’s budget, 182 billion rupees have been allocated for finance schemes; there are 701 billion foreign funding schemes in Karachi.
An amount of Rs 27.5 billion has been reserved for local councils, while Rs 14.5 billion for solid waste management schemes.
The work of BRT Red Line is also under progress, for which an amount of Rs 26 billion has been allocated. In addition to this, an amount of Rs 23 billion has also been allocated for the Yellow Line.
He said Jinnah Hospital has been given a new cyber-knife worth Rs.1 billion which will benefit the entire country. He said that Rs.1.2 billion is tagged for Karachi-Thatta Dual Carriage Way. Malir Expressway is a project worth Rs 27.5 billion, Dhabiji Industrial Estate is a project worth Rs 16 billion.
Sindh Local Government Minister Nasir Hussain Shah, Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon, Labour and Manpower Minister Syed Ghani, Sindh Government Spokesman Murtaza Wahab were also present.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
Comments
Comments are closed.