THATTA: Over 14 months have passed since the establishment of Sujawal as a new district carved out of the old Thatta district but not even a brick has been laid to date to build its necessary infrastructure, forcing residents of the new district to keep shuttling to Thatta to get their routine official work done, it emerged on Saturday.

The government had issued a notification in October last year, announcing the creation of the new district which it said comprised talukas of Sujawal, Mirpur Bathoro, Jati, Chuhar Jamali and Shahbunder.

It announced further that Rs5 billion had been allocated for the construction of offices of 14 major departments for the new district.

Following the issuance of the notification, provincial secretary of works and services visited various sites in Sujawal and identified 120 acres of state land on the outskirts of the town for the construction of offices of social welfare, forest, sports, education, executive engineers of education works, highways, public health engineering, food control, population welfare, anti-corruption, etc. but no further progress has been made since then, according to official sources.

The office of the SSP has been temporarily set up in the town’s police station and the CIA police station in the irrigation rest house as no SNE (summary for new expenditure) had since then been approved, said the sources.

The government had also announced development schemes for the town and approved a development package of Rs700 million for the construction of water supply, roads, drainage, solar-powered streetlights and public toilets and tenders were also issued in this regard but everything stalled afterwards for reasons best known to the planners, they said.

The Sujawal taluka hospital, the only major health facility in the new district, still awaited upgrade to a civil hospital and the town its own fire brigade.

Sujawal residents have demanded immediate construction of the infrastructure of the new district to facilitate the general public and lessen their problems.

Published in Dawn December 14th , 2014