Less than half of city uplift work completed
Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif inspected under-construction road, street, and drainage projects in progress under the Lahore Development Plan during a surprise visit to several areas of the city.
The chief minister directed the officials concerned to ensure the quality of the construction work at all cost and ensure timely completion of the development plan. She also visited a vegetable shop and checked the prices. She visited a market in the Chauburji area and enquired about the citizens' well-being, cleanliness arrangements and projects on the occasion.
According to an official statement, citizens said their street had been built within 15 days after a wait of 40 years.
However, sources in the relevant departments said the completion in time of the whole of the Lahore Development Programme, launched with an estimated cost of Rs137 billion was likely to be a challenge for the departments concerned.
They said the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) had so far completed 45 per cent of the development work assigned to it under the programe. The metropolitan corporation has completed 32% of the work.
Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz had approved an allocation of Rs137 billion for various schemes for WASA and the Metropolitan Corporation Lahore.
In the first phase of the plan, 252 WASA schemes were approved for the Gulberg, Ravi, Data Ganj Bakhsh, Samnabad, Iqbal Town, and Nishtar zones with an estimated cost of Rs41.35 billion.
An amount of Rs29.35 billion was initially released for the projects, of which Rs12.8 billion has been spent so far.
During the past five months, 45% of the projects have been completed while the work on the rest is under way.
The highest ratio of incomplete projects is in Samnabad.
The work in the Ravi zone will be carried out in the second phase.
WASA Managing Director Ghufran Ahmed told The Express Tribune that work on the development programme is progressing rapidly and the chief minister has released funds to solve the problems of Lahore on a permanent basis.
He said WASA would complete its work in all the zones by July 30.
On the other hand, the metropolitan corporation has to implement 3,820 schemes across the city at a cost of Rs19 billion, but work has been started on 2,676 of them so far.
Out of the schemes, 960 have been completed, depicting a rate of 32%.
The sources said Deputy Commissioner Syed Musa Raza had expressed dissatisfaction during a recent meeting over the slow pace of work in some areas after being briefed about the ongoing development schemes.
The officials said that most of the schemes could only be completed after the work on sewerage and water supply lines would be completed by WASA.
The DC said instructions had been issued to the Metropolitan Corporation Lahore to complete the Lahore Development Programme Phase I by June 30 so that the schemes could be concluded within the stipulated time frame. WASA also issued instructions to complete the work within the time frame.
Deputy Commissioner Musa Raza the second phase of the development programme would be launched as soon as possible after the completion of Phase I.