HYDERABAD, Dec 17: District Nazim Makhdoom Rafiquzzaman has said that Hyderabad district will soon be upgraded and given the status of a city district.

Speaking at a meeting here on Thursday, he said that he had prepared a comprehensive plan on which work was started after the creation of the district government system.

He said the National Reconstruction Bureau had been urged implement the plan. He expressed the hope that the status of Hyderabad would be upgraded as the city district before the next local bodies' elections.

Recalling the old glory of the city, he said that it had been a centre of trade and commerce for a long time. He said after achieving the status of the city district, existing TMAs would be replaced by town administrations and the number of towns would be increased by merging some union councils into Saeedabad, Odero Lal Station, Nasarpur, Chamber and Bulri Shah Karim towns.

He said the city district government would open up Hyderabad to international organizations and obtain adequate development funds. About the Hyderabad development package, the nazim said that the implementation of the package had been linked with the appointment of consultants.

He said he had proposed to the Sindh government to provide Rs250 million each under the head of electricity, gas and communication works from the Rs1 billion allocated by it for the implementation of the Hyderabad development package till the consultants were appointed.

He said a proposal for widening and improving the Mirpurkhas-Tando Allahyar-Tandojam road with by-passes had also been sent to the government. He said it would open up new avenues of revenue generation for the Hyderabad district.

About ongoing development schemes of Tando Allahyar taluka, the nazim said the district government was experiencing difficulties in the implementation of schemes approved under the head of sugar cess development fund due to delay in release of these funds.

He said he had taken up this problem with the Sindh government and hopefully it would be resolved within a week. He said about 42 of 51 development schemes undertaken under different development portfolios had been completed while work on nine development schemes and six ongoing abandoned schemes was in progress in Tando Allahyar taluka.