LAHORE: The cash-strapped PTI Punjab government intends to try public-private partnership to initially construct 500,000 low cost houses for the low income people and explore the information technology sector to provide jobs to implement Prime Minister Imran Khan’s 100-day agenda, officials said on Sunday.

Pervaiz Elahi’s government in Punjab had pursued the project model and Shahbaz Sharif’s government went for companies model for running their development programmes.

According to high-placed officials, the federal government had announced five million low cost houses and 10 million jobs in the country. As per initial estimates, Punjab was to provide several million jobs and construct one million low cost homes. In the first instance the province intended to announce construction of 500,000 houses and one million jobs.

They said the main problem for the provincial government was how to fund these two federal government programmes. The thinking so far was to handle the houses issue by involving private sector. They said land for the houses had been identified in the suburbs of Lahore near the Motorway. The houses would be built as per different income slabs of people including government officials, also providing them the facility of making payments in installments.

Officials said the government intended to explore the information technology sector to mainly fulfill the prime minister’s promise of giving jobs to people because of human resource saturation in all other public sectors.

They said the government would announce that Punjab was having a surplus of Rs100 billion when the Pervaiz Elahi government departed in 2008. But now it was having an acute negative cash balance.

It would also announce that the previous government made advance payments to contractors who executed its various development projects which it could not under the law.

The PTI government intended to introduce e-payment and e-procurement to ensure transparency and honesty in its dealings. A fiscal responsibility law was also being drafted to make all stakeholders, including the government officials and contractors, responsible for any delays, escalation of costs and plundering of national wealth in any project.

Another major aspect of the government policy would be to massively involve community in running schools. The previous government spent Rs100 billion in the last 10 years to improve the overall condition of public schools but the enrolment rate was still low. The PTI government intended to improve it by involving community in the affairs of schools, they said.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2018