KARACHI, June 26: A high-level meeting held here on Wednesday under the chairmanship of Governor Mohammadmian Soomro, decided to construct new buildings for provincial government offices housed in old barracks in Karachi.
The new buildings will be constructed at the place where the old barracks are located. In the first phase, new buildings will be constructed in place of block-4-A and 4-B on both sides of Sindh High Court Building. The first phase is to be completed in three years with an estimated cost of Rs70 million. The governor directed the officials to maintain sanctity of the Sindh High Court Building while constructing the new government offices.
Issuing guidelines for the construction of new office buildings, the governor stressed that these be equipped with modern facilities, connected to e-government networking and with provision of neat and clean atmosphere and capacity especially for public hearings.
The governor was told that overall setting of the buildings would be in a park-like environment with a provision of minimum 400 car parking spaces for government offices and 200 car parking spaces for visitors with due consideration of security. There would also be waiting areas, drinking water provision, cafeteria and public toilets etc.
The governor emphasized on formulating a time-frame for each stage of the work, including survey, architecture etc so that it could be completed in a specified period.
Declaring the provincial department of communication & works as the focal department for this project, it was decided to appoint a project director with immediate effect while the offers for pre-qualification of surveyor and architecture companies would be advertised in a week.
The meeting was informed that five firms are expected to be pre-qualified by a committee constituted for this purpose. During the construction, offices housed in these blocks will be shifted to nearby government buildings.
The meeting decided to award the architecture company with a prize of Rs.0.3 million for most appropriate design of the buildings and Rs0.150 million for each remaining participant. A five-member jury would be formulated for both the competitions, consisting of a chairman, to be nominated by the government, and eminent architects and planners to be nominated by the committee. It was suggested that Institute of Architects Pakistan may be appointed for organizing the competitions.
Earlier, the meeting condoled on death of former federal minister Omer Asghar Khan.
Provincial ministers Dewan Muhammad Yousuf Farooqui, Maj-Gen Ahsan Ahmed, Maulana Wali Razi, Abdul Qadir Halepoto, Syed Ali Mir Shah, chief secretary Javed Ashraf Hussain, principal secretary to governor Akhtar Zamin, additional chief secretary P&D Shahzado Shaikh and others attended the meeting.—PPI