May 9, 2006	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1427

ISLAMABAD, May 8: The mid-term review team of the European Commission (EC) has graded the 25.942-million-euro national Strengthening of Livestock Services Project (SLSP) as the worst project ever carried out by the commission and the Pakistan government, sources told Dawn.

The EC has also ordered investigation into the alleged financial mismanagement carried out in the project by sending its audit team. The six-year project is at its half stage, however, only seven per cent of the funds have so far been utilised. It is believed that the money went into the wrong pockets, the sources added.

When contacted the SLSP’s European co-director, Robert J. Cornnor told Dawn that the EC had awarded “C” status to the project for failing to achieve any of its objectives. “In grade D, they close a project. The SLSP was awarded grade C, which means that its performance remained the worst, however, it may be continued,” Mr Cornnor said.

The project was started in September 2003. However, complaints of embezzlement and mismanagement compelled the EC to dispatch its mid-term review team eight months prior to the actual date. Resultantly, the EC’s team arrived here on January 23. Till then, the Pakistani government was unable to provide skilled staff for various posts. Even the post of the country co-director was being run temporarily.

The project is being implemented jointly by the EC and Pakistan, therefore, the European Commission had also to provide some of the managerial staff. However, due to the official red tape — which involves the tiresome selection process of foreigners and require clearance from the interior and foreign ministries — most of the critical EC posts still remained vacant.

Both the Pakistani and EC officials have to counter-sign the cheques owing to which the release of funds was almost freeze since the inception of the project. Only operational funds for day to day activities and payment of various bills were available.

SLSP’s national co-director, Dr R H Usmani told Dawn that still there were problems in the counter-signing of cheques in Balochistan and Sindh provinces as there were no EC’s financial managers available, which meant that the project was still short of skilled people. He also accepted that accounts were being audited by the EC team following allegations of embezzlement.

“Now our staff members come to Islamabad from Quetta and Sindh to counter-sign their cheques from the EC’s official here. This is wastage of time though at present “we face no problem in the disbursement of funds”, Dr Usmani said.

The project is suffering from in-built faults. Its PC-1 was too loose and scattered. It was loaded with too many objectives to achieve.

In 2001, FAO and the EC had completed its project on the eradication of viral animal disease -— rinderpest — from Pakistan. But, as the disease was still hovering over Pakistan, the EC decided to provide grant for the SLSP with main focus on continuation of the rinderpest eradication plan.

Ironically, the PC-1 was loaded with 13 objectives. The scope of each objective was so that every single objective needed a separate national level project. For example, the SLSP had also to help the government in the formulation of the national livestock policy, a task that itself is a big project and was impossible for the SLSP to achieve.

Responding to a question, Dr Usmani said the PC-1 could not be amended as getting it approved from the Ecnec would take another two to three years.