KARACHI, March 19: Sindh Governor Muhammedmian Soomro has taken serious note of the slow pace of planning and execution of projects pertaining to development and people’s welfare.

At a high-level meeting held here on Tuesday in the Governor’s House, he expressed extreme displeasure over the situation and warned the officials and heads of department of disciplinary action if they did not change their attitude, said a press release issued from the Governor‘s House.

The governor directed the chief secretary to keep him informed about the officials showing slackness so that action could be taken against them.

The people of this province had no facilities of drinking water, health, education, and there was a paucity of funds. But President Gen Pervez Musharraf arranged funds and launched megaprojects of it. In spite of all that if any person showed negligence and did not utilize the available resources, he could not be forgiven, Mr Soomro warned.

The officials, under the powers delegated to them, have to take decisions and implement the same within a specified time frame.

Such officers also would not be spared who despite being experienced and in higher grades acted as subordinates and looked towards others and higher levels for taking decisions and execution of works.

Governor Soomro said people of drought-stricken areas of the province were faced with hardships but no project had been launched under the Drought Emergency Relief Assistance (DERA) whereas the government had made provision of sufficient funds in this respect.

The meeting, attended by officials of the Planning and Development Department, also reviewed other development schemes.

Official sources said the Sindh government had received the first instalment of Rs500 million from the federal government out of its share in DERA. However, the launching of development schemes in the province under this programme might take a few months as only seven district governments had yet to submit the lists of proposed schemes.

The provincial government had selected 12, out of 16 districts, for launching development schemes under DERA. These are Thatta, Badin, Khairpur, Larkana, Ghotki, Dadu, Sanghar, Mirpurkhas, Tharparkar, Shikarpur, Jacobabad and parts of defunct district of Malir, Karachi.

The district governments of Thatta, Badin, Khairpur, Karachi, Larkana, Ghotki and Tharparkar have so far furnished the lists of schemes. The government had asked the rest of the district governments to expedite the preparation of lists and set March 15 last as the deadline for its submission.

The seven district governments have proposed about 500 projects worth Rs2,500 million in the water supply, education, health and roads sectors. After receiving lists from the remaining district governments, all the projects will be examined and discussed at different forums at provincial level. The entire process of scrutiny, modifications, if required, and approval would take a month but the execution of the schemes would take a little more time.

DERA is being funded by the Asian Development Bank, which has provided a soft loan of Rs10 billion to the government of Pakistan for initiating development schemes in the drought-hit areas of the country. Out of this, Sindh will get about Rs3.3 billion as its share.