Performance assessment : CM presents report on 3 years in govt
A confident-looking chief minister presented a report on three years of his government in the Sindh Assembly on Thursday.
In his 29-page speech, Qaim Ali Shah detailed projects underaken, roads built and money spent on Sindh. The report discussed the setbacks suffered during the floods, which forced the administration to scale back spending.
The CM said that crime, for instance, has gone down significantly since 2007. In fact, street crime has gone down 64 per cent. However, Razzaque Rahim, the deputy parliamentary leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (Likeminded group), pointed out that these were just police figures and, according to him, “these officials always misguide the higher authorities by presenting bogus reports.”
For his part, Jameel Yousuf, the founding chief of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), said that he did not know where the chief minister had acquired his data. “I don’t think that crime has gone down to such extent,” he said.
Leader of the Opposition in the Sindh Assembly Jam Madad Ali, who belongs to the PML-F, was also sceptical, saying that in rural Sindh people did not travel after dark because it was too dangerous. “I think crime has gone up 200 per cent all over Sindh,” he said.
The chief minister gave details of money spent on roads, irrigation and rehabilitation of flood-hit villages. For instance, he said, Sindh borrowed $405 million from the Asian Development Bank to fix the flood-damaged irrigation and road networks in two years. So far, 2,300 km of roads have been made “motorable”, 2,856 breaches have been plugged in canals and bunds and the irrigation department has been given Rs10 billion.
Jam Madad Ali was critical of this as well. “Contractors are charging around 40 per cent in commission for development schemes in Sindh,” he said. “How can these people work in a transparent manner?” The corruption was so bad, he said, that a monitoring committee for the work being done on Tori bund and other breaches had recommended the government stop giving contractors money because they have not plugged the breaches properly.
The chief minister did not mention a single word on minorities and how much had been spent on or done for them in the last three years.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 13th, 2011.
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