PDP chief slams corruption in development projects in Sindh
KARACHI: From the bridge collapse in Ghotki to the suspension of a contractor in the Karachi Red Line BRT project, Sindh continues to pay a heavy price for a systemic corruption in development projects being carried out by the ruling politicians and top bureaucratic, said Pasban Democratic Party (PDP) Chairman Altaf Shakoor here Sunday.
He said a systematic corruption system is devouring public money in Sindh, which mostly goes into the pockets political decision-makers, and bureaucratic approval chains, due to poor oversight and weak enforcement on the ground.
He said these are not isolated failures of engineering alone; they point toward a deeper structural breakdown in how public contracts are awarded, supervised, and ultimately held accountable. He said official audit observations reinforce the scale of the problem. Reports attributed to the Auditor General of Pakistan have identified financial irregularities in Sindh government departments exceeding Rs836 billion, including procurement violations, irregular payments, missing documentation, and unsupported expenditures. While such findings are audit observations, but their repeated and systemic nature raises difficult questions about whether governance weaknesses have become routine rather than exceptional.
He said at the same time, accountability concerns extend beyond infrastructure performance. A number of elected representatives and political figures in Sindh are currently facing ongoing corruption references and investigations in various accountability forums, reflecting broader and long-standing concerns about governance, procurement oversight, and the use of public authority in development decision-making.
He said a collapse of an under-construction bridge near Ghotki-Kandhkot over the Indus River has intensified scrutiny of how such failures occur despite formal engineering standards and supervisory layers. A bridge failure at the construction stage is not a minor defect; it suggests breakdowns in material testing, supervision, contractor accountability, and certification of work progress before payments are released. The key concern is not only what failed on the ground, but how multiple layers of oversight failed to prevent it.
He said corruption is spread from Kandhkot to Karachi, as a recent suspension of a contractor in the Karachi Red Line BRT project over substandard work and delays highlights recurring weaknesses in contractor selection and enforcement discipline. The Red Line is a flagship urban transport project intended to transform mobility in Karachi, and such interventions during execution suggest that either initial procurement screening was insufficient or enforcement mechanisms were activated too late to prevent major quality concerns.
He said sadly across Sindh’s development landscape, patterns continue to emerge: cost overruns, delayed delivery, incomplete works, and infrastructure requiring repairs shortly after completion. These outcomes reflect a procurement environment where incentives can become distorted at multiple stages—planning, tendering, execution, and payment certification—allowing value leakage even without a single visible point of failure.
Altaf Shakoor said the financial implications of this political systematic corruption are significant. Even moderate inefficiencies in procurement and execution—estimated in many public-sector systems at 20–30 percent through overpricing, weak controls, and substandard delivery—translate into billions of rupees lost annually. That loss directly reduces the number of schools built, hospitals upgraded, roads maintained, and water systems delivered, effectively shrinking the real value of the development budget.
He said despite high expenditure, Sindh continues to face persistent development challenges, including inadequate access to safe drinking water, gaps in public healthcare delivery, and large numbers of out-of-school children. The disconnection between spending and outcomes remains one of the most persistent governance concerns in the province.
He said what makes the issue more critical is the perception of weak accountability. In many cases, development failures do not lead to visible consequences for those responsible for approvals, supervision, or execution. When enforcement is inconsistent, it weakens deterrence across both political and administrative systems, allowing underperformance and inefficiency to persist across project cycles.
He said Sindh’s development challenge is therefore not a lack of resources or ambition. It is a structural governance issue where political influence, bureaucratic discretion, and weak enforcement intersect too often without effective scrutiny. The Ghotki-Kandhkot bridge collapse and the Red Line contractor suspension are not isolated incidents—they are warning signals that the cost of weak governance is being directly transferred to the public in the form of failed infrastructure, delayed services, and reduced development impact.
He demanded a serious probe into this systematic corruption at the highest national level so that this cruel wastage and looting of the public funds is checked effectively.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026