CM calls for foreign help to construct ‘plastic roads’

Secretary Soho provides overview of Annual Development Programme (ADP) for 2023-24

KARACHI:

Sindh’s Caretaker Chief Minister Justice (retd) Maqbool Baqar has stressed the need to seek assistance from other countries to implement the concept of plastic roads. This discussion took place during a meeting of the Works and Services Department that he presided over at the CM House on Saturday.

Notable attendees of the meeting included Chief Secretary Dr Fakhar Alam, Chairman P&D Shakeel Manganijo, CM’s Principal Secretary Hasan Naqvi, Secretary Finance Kazim Jatoi, and Secretary Works and Service Nawaz Soho.

Secretary Soho provided an overview of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) for 2023-24, which encompasses 956 schemes with a total cost of Rs89,500.5 million. Of this, Rs39,026.73 million has already been released, and Rs18,089 million has been spent so far.

Inspection of uplift works

Secretary Soho briefed the CM about the progress of inspections, its observations, and findings along with recommendations conducted by him and his office in various districts of Sindh. He also showed the CM a new inspection schedule and its parameters developed by the department. The CM directed the Works and Services Department to add a new column in the inspection report to reflect the “causes and details about the revision of the project.” The CM directed the department to take stern departmental action against the delinquent officers involved in corrupt practices and causing poor work of different development projects.

Video recording

Soho also updated the CM about the monitoring mechanism of various projects. At this, the CM directed that for every major development project, there should be digital recordings, images, or videos at every stage of the project. The recorded data can be stored in the archives in the shape of DVDs or in USBs. Soho also gave a briefing on the road research lab and monitoring unit within the department. He proposed certain recommendations for improving the role of the monitoring unit at different levels especially appointing DG monitoring from cadre services.

At this, the CM said that the post of DG monitoring could be filled through a competitive process, which can be either from a market or from a cadre of services or existing engineers. He ordered maintenance of proper logbooks of official vehicles where all the necessary information must be included.

The CM also directed the secretary to arrange a third-party audit of all the taxes collected at various tolls of the provincial highways.

The chief minister said that most of the countries have started constructing plastic roads.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 22^nd, 2023.