PESHAWAR, May 28: The plan for a new NWFP Assembly building, being carried out at an estimated cost of Rs350 million, has some major flaws, according to experts, who say that some basic requirements like car-parking facility have been ignored.
They said that the NWFP Works and Services Department, which is executing the project, is now in a fix and despite heavy cost involved the building would hardly cater to the requirements of the assembly’s secretariat staff.
An engineer said: “Such a narrow and congested area is not suitable the assembly secretariat. Despite availability of 300 kanals in Hayatabad allotted for the purpose, the government selected such an inappropriate site for the assembly building,” said an engineer.
Engineers recently ruled out any alteration or modification in the design of the building to provide parking facilities and said that 70 per cent civil work on the project had been completed and it was not possible to provide space for parking.
They said that Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani was briefed about the flaws in the plan when he visited the site recently.
Officials in the Cantonment Board said that the Works and Services Department had violated building bylaws by not providing car-parking facilities and the building plan had not been discussed with Cantonment authorities.
A government functionary said that the chief minister’s secretariat and the department concerned were now taking into consideration other options to address the problem.
He said that it had been proposed to acquire land from the Pakistan Meteorological Department situated opposite the assembly building and convert it into a parking area and also provide additional space for the assembly secretariat or to build an underground car-parking facility.
“If the federal government agrees to give the Met office area it can be linked with the assembly premises through an underpass,” he said.
After increasing the number of constituencies from 83 to 124 in the NWFP, the existing provincial assembly hall was insufficient and a proposal to shift it to another site is being considered ever since 2002.
The officials said that the Communication and Works Department had opposed expansion of the existing assembly building keeping in view lack of space, adding that the government had allotted 300 kanals in Hayatabad for the purpose.
But the then governor Lt Gen (retd) Iftikhar Hussain Shah, who was also chief executive of the province, rejected the proposal and directed the department concerned to build a new hall on the premises of the existing assembly. The government had allocated Rs200 million for the project.
They said that slow pace of construction work and shortage of funds had caused delay in the construction work, which increased the cost of the project from Rs200 million to Rs350 million.
Out of the total estimated cost an amount of Rs20 million had been allocated for the decoration of the main hall, the sources said.
Initially, they said, a Lahore-based company had estimated Rs30 million as the decoration cost.
However, the proposal was rejected and now another company has been assigned to do the job.
“The former contractor had abandoned the project due to non-payment. Then the assembly speaker and the chief minister intervened and the new company took over the project,” the sources said.
Sources apprehended that the seating capacity in the new hall would be insufficient in case the federal government decided to integrate FATA in to the NWFP.
They said that if this happens, then the people of tribal areas would be represented in the provincial assembly and the assembly hall would not be able to cater to such a large number of members, they said.