KARACHI, Feb 4: A full time Executive Officer of the Provincial Committee on Investment (PCI) has been appointed on a lucrative pay package in the Sindh Industries Department.

Sources close to the Committee said that a final approval of a foreign trained consultant as Executive Officer was given on Monday in a meeting. The Committee includes several serving bureaucrats of the Sindh government and representatives drawn from the private sector.

Appointment of this consultant comes at a time when Sindh government is exercising ‘financial discipline’ on the administrative departments, which has affected their functioning.

The committee on Monday also discussed a number of proposals that could make Karachi a transit place for onward transportation of equipment, material, professionals and workers needed in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

“The Committee will meet again on Wednesday to consider proposals on this issue,” one of the members of the Committee said.

The committee has set up sectoral committees on textile, banking and finance, engineering, vendors, transportation and on other allied matters. The committee is expected to give a detailed presentation to the government.

Formation of the PCI comes in midst of reports that a process of a virtual de-industrialisation has set in Sindh as industrial growth was negative for the last several months and unemployment is touching alarming levels.

A proposal to organize a fair of unemployed personnel in the province has apparently been shelved unannounced as top government functionaries considered it a ridiculous idea.

“Rather than collecting data on unemployment, we are gathering information on the availability of human resources in terms of specific skills and also unskilled,” a member of the PCI said.

A Sindh Economic Revival Task Force was constituted mid-2000 which formed several sectoral committees. “More than 150 professionals have produced reports in six to eight weeks,” a document of Sindh government claimed in the report of Sindh Economic Revival Plan (SERIP).

A Governor’s Implementation Cell was proposed to set up to ensure the implementation of all the proposals made by various committees and sectoral groups of this Task Force.

Furthermore, an Economic Development Council for Karachi was set up with governor as its head. This nine-member Council — five from the private sector and four from government — is said to be still functional.

A pompous ceremony was organized in the Governor House in Karachi when Chief Executive General Pervaiz Musharraf launched all these development plans, economic revival programmes for Sindh in general and Karachi in particular.

“End result of all these exercises was the regularisation of more than 260 illegally constructed buildings in the city, which has now given a licence to the developers and constructors to further vandalise Karachi,” a local business leader remarked.