KARACHI: The governing body of the Sehwan Development Authority has called for a detailed report regarding unauctioned or cancelled plots of the Gulshan Shahbaz Scheme while approval for the proposed Sehwan Hills public-private partnership project has been linked to verification of its land and feasibility.

This decision was taken by the SDA governing body, which met here on Tuesday at the office of Local Government Minister Saeed Ghani, who also presided over the meeting being chairman of the SDA.

The meeting, besides approving Rs134 million SDA budget for 2017-18, requested the chief minister for special grant from the Sindh government so that the SDA could stand on its own feet because at present due to poor performance of the SDA its staff had not been paid salaries for the last couple of months.

Speaking at the meeting, which was attended by secretary for local bodies and SDA Syed Khalid Hyder Shah, SDA director general Engineer Munir Ahmad Soomro, additional secretary for local government Jalaluddin Mahar and SE for public health engineering Kausar Khan Junejo, local government minister Saeed Ghani said our all efforts were aimed at summoning a meeting of every authority at least quarterly so that the people could be provided maximum relief.

He said that in the past the work performance of the SDA had slowed down as a result of which the authority did not possess enough resources to even pay salaries to its staff.

The meeting also summoned the CEO of the Sehwan Hills project for a detailed briefing before initiating work by the private company on its first phase of over 250 acres.

The meeting decided to auction a two-acre plot of the SDA, which was allocated for an educational institution, instead of allotting it to some private college.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2018