CHAKWAL, Oct 21: Due to lack of funds, work on – near completion – mega project has been stopped.
Dawn has learnt that the construction of Government Polytechnic Institute Chakwal near Thoha Bahadur village, hit a snag as Punjab Government changed the procedure for allocation of funds.
The construction of the Polytechnic Institute was conceived by Sardar Ghulam Abbas, during his first tenure as District Nazim in 2001. He requested the then governor of Punjab Khalid Maqbool for the approval of the project and the request was granted. For this purpose a major chunk of land of 5 acres were acquired from Barani Agriculture Institute. The college was to be built at the cost of 110 million rupees.
However the construction could not be started till 2008 due to some administrative problems. Punjab Government issued funds to provincial building department in 2008 and the work continued smoothly till 2011. But during the financial year of 2011-12 the Punjab Government adopted a new procedure of payment and transferred all funds to Technical Educational Vocational Training Authority(Tevta). Currently the work on the near complete college has been stopped as according to building department Tevta is not releasing funds.
Recently District Coordination Officer (DCO) Ahmad Aziz Tarar also wrote a letter (a copy is available with Dawn) to the head of Tevta in which he pointed out the delay in releasing funds as the sole factor which slowed down the work on both colleges.
Talking to Dawn Sub Divisional Officer of Provincial Building Department Jamil Arshad said that the new procedure of payment consumes a lot of time. “It takes us two to three months to get the cheque issued by Tevta and due to such lengthy process the work on polytechnic institute has been stopped as we could not make payment to the contractor”, he confirmed.
The contractor who is tasked to complete the work is also in a state of quandary. The overwhelming increase in construction material has added to the woes of the contractor.
When contacted, Chief Operating Officer of Tevta Khalid Mehmood said that cheques are being issued on time and according to the set procedure.
District Manager of Tevta Mohammad Mohsin is of the view that first the contractor should finish his work, then he should demand payments from us.
