PM for expediting work on model jail

Forms six-member committee to review prison project

ISLAMABAD:

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday issued directives to complete work on Islamabad’s first and modern prison.

Work on the modern prison in Sector H-16 had been hanging in the balance for the last over 10 years owing to a lack of funds.

The under-construction jail will house 2,000 prisoners and will be equipped with a 22-bed hospital, a school for the children of the jail staff, a mosque, a library, an auditorium, segregated cells and separate barracks for women and juvenile prisoners.

Currently, Adiala Jail is housing Islamabad’s share of prisoners as the capital has no jail. The ICT administration also wants its own jail as it is becoming increasingly problematic for the police to transport suspects to and from Rawalpindi after court hearings.

Taking notice of the delay of the work, the prime minister formed a six-member committee headed by Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah to review the prison project. The prime minister has sought the report from the committee within a week.

The Islamabad jail complex is being constructed on 90-acre in Sector H-16 near the motorway. The complex will also have a training facility for prison officials.

Earlier, the contract for the project was awarded to different contractors by Pakistan Public Works Department. The auditors earlier raised the objection that the construction of the project’s subheads including the admin block, boundary wall and male block has been started without the approval of a layout plan by CDA, which was a pre-requisite under the Islamabad Residential Sector Zoning Regulation 2005. The approval of the building plan from CDA was later included in the scope of consultant services of the project.

The project cost of the Islamabad Model Jail is expected to escalate by millions of rupees due to the negligence of related authorities. The government has allocated funds for the project in successive annual budgets over the past few years but had been unable to start work on it in earnest until now that is.Two MOs, others booked for issuing bogus report.

In 2018, Ahsan Iqbal had inaugurated work on the long-awaited prison in the capital when he was the iinterior mminister during the tenure of the PML-N’s previous stunt in the office. However, the work has consistently faced delay since then.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 28^th, 2022.