KOHAT, April 9: A large-scale embezzlement has been detected by the district government in the laying of sewerage lines throughout the city with a cost of Rs120 million in 1994, it has been learnt.

In 1995 the Asian Development Bank had sanctioned a grant of more than Rs4000 million for improving the sanitation system and construction of natural fertilizer recycling plants using the sewerage collected through the new sewerage lines in the major cities in the province.

The municipal engineers of the respective organizations were deputed as project directors to plan and execute the huge task to keep the cities clean by upgrading the existing system to cope with the problems created by the ever-increasing towns and population.

The bungling surfaced when the district Nazim demanded the map of the laid sewerage lines with a cost of Rs120 million. The municipal engineer Qutub Mansoor, who had executed the project, however failed to produce required documents and relevant expenditure record thus strengthening the belief that sewerage system never existed in majority of the areas of the city from where the people had been complaining about choking of lines.

As a result of digging in some areas the fact came to surface that there existed no sewerage lines as had been claimed by the former administration that the system had been upgraded to cater to the needs of the local population for at least next 10 years.

The district Nazim, Engineer Malik Asad, told Dawn that poor people were being crushed under new taxes by the government to pay off huge foreign loans which had never reached them whereas those corrupt officials who accumulated wealth without any fear still remained scot free despite claims by the accountability bureau.