ISLAMABAD: The dissolution of the Pakistan Public Works Department was made in haste, and now this closure is creating a lot of problems for the bureaucracy.
This was stated by Syed Zakaria Ali Shah, Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Housing, in a meeting of the sub-committee of the Standing Committee on Planning, Development and Special Initiatives held under the chairmanship of MNA Syed Sami ul Hassan Gilani.
He said all of a sudden, the closure of PWD created confusion among different ministries about who would manage the ongoing development projects, which were managed by now-defunct PWD.
The committee chairman admitted the fact that the dissolution of PWD was causing a lot of problems. He said the majority of development projects, which were going on under the supervision of PWD, have been transferred to the respective provincial governments, but there are some development projects whose fate is still undecided. He said alone in his own constituency Rs 1.5 billion worth of development schemes are going on, and none of them were transferred to the provincial government, nor were they transferred to the recently formed Pakistan Infrastructure Development Company.
The Planning Commission senior official on this occasion clarified that it authorised the provinces and PIDC to execute these approved projects and allocated funds for them accordingly, which would be released by the Ministry of Finance. He said if there is any ambiguity, they would address it promptly.
The committee chairman said that though PWD is closed but what it was doing was very important. He said PWD functions and responsibilities have to be carried by Pakistan Infrastructure Development and Asset Management Authority (PIDAMA), which would replace it. He said development schemes executed by provinces have a higher cost compared to the projects completed by PIDCL. “We save Rs 15-20 million on the projects completed by PIDCL compared to what we paid to the provinces for the same quality of work.”
After the meeting, a senior official from the Ministry of Housing, in an informal chat, said there are 30,000 employees of PWD whose fate is still not decided, and among them, 1400 are civil engineers. He said to terminate the services of permanent employees the Government has made an amendment in the Civil Service Act. He said the PWD top officials advised the government to shut down the PWD in a gradual manner within 2 to 3 years, but no attention was paid to their advice. He said the government and especially the Prime Minister is unaware of ground realities and whoever from the government wants new premises, the PM referred him to take over PWD buildings without knowing that the jobs of the PWD employees are still intact.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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