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HYDERABAD, Dec 7: The Sindh Government has decided to hire consultants and appoint a project director (not from any government department) on contract basis for four years for execution of Hyderabad’s uplift plan of Rs10.5 billion, an official source said.
The decision was taken in Thursday’s meeting, chaired by Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad in Karachi.
The meeting was attended by the district Nazim, Hyderabad, Dr Makhdoom Rafiquzzaman; the district Naib Nazim, Nawab Rashid Ali Khan; Finance Minister Syed Sardar Ahmed, Minister for Auqaf, Zakat and Ushr, Religious/Minority Affairs Dr Irfan Gul Magsi, and treasury benches MNAs/MPAs among others.
DISTRICT NAZIM: The district Nazim has threatened to withdraw from the steering committee, appointed by the provincial government, in case the project director was hired on contract basis for four years, and added that the project should be referred to the ECNEC and the project director should be a government servant, who must work under the district government.
He, however, did not object to hiring of private consultants.
A reliable source said that the government’s decision seemed to have dashed all hopes of the district government, Hyderabad, that the project director would be given under its administrative control, and added that the consultants as well as the project director would not be the government officials but they would be working in close coordination with the steering committee, jointly headed by the Sindh governor and Sindh Chief Minister Sardar Ali Mohammad Mahar and the working committee that is now headed by the adviser, Local Bodies, Waseem Akhtar.
The committee was earlier headed by Syed Sardar Ahmed.
There has been a cry that the project director should be a government official, preferably from the district government, Hyderabad, so that he should be answerable to it.
The government of Sindh had earlier appointed a 19-member committee to oversee implementation of the Rs10.5 billion Hyderabad master plan in the district but since the district Nazim was not included in it its notification it was withdrawn. Now the district Nazim and his deputy are both members of the steering committee.
The source claimed that the consultants would be required to review previous master plans of the city, fix priorities of schemes which were submitted by the district government and those of ruling parties’ MNAs/MPAs.
The posts of consultants and project director would be advertised and their tenure would be for four years.
The steering committee will oversee the whole plan, whereas the execution will be monitored by the working committee.
The source disclosed that Sindh Minister Dr Irfan Gul Magsi opposed the proposal on the ground that the Taluka Nazims were duly represented by the district Nazim and Naib Nazim, and if they were to be taken as members then why should the union council Nazims be ignored.
He said that union council Nazims were not consulted for identifying schemes of the Khushhal Pakistan Programme.
He claimed that since a huge amount of government money was involved; therefore, the matter should not be handed over to any private person, and added that who would be responsible once the plan had been executed because the project director would not be available when his contract was over.
