KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister (CM) Syed Murad Ali Shah on Monday announced that water supply and drainage schemes would be included in the new provincial Annual Development Programme (ADP) as part of the provincial budget for fiscal year 2025-26.

Chairing a high-level meeting at the CM House, Mr Shah said that several development schemes focusing on water supply, drainage, solar energy, and both industrial and agricultural development would be included in the ADP.

In the last year’s ADP, no new schemes had been included and the CM in his budget speech had said that the focus would be on the completion of the projects that had been ongoing for the past 10 years.

The CM also emphasised that reconstruction of the schools damaged by floods would be a top priority in the forthcoming uplift plan.

He directed the P&D department to carefully plan completion of all ongoing schemes first.

Highlighting the scale of this year’s development programme, the CM recalled that the ADP was worth Rs493 billion, with Rs55 billion specifically allocated under the district ADP.

Mr Shah added that there were 4,644 development schemes in progress during the current fiscal year, and it was expected that 1,812 of them would be completed by the end of June 2025.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2025