Cutting costs: Civil Secretariat to demolish Rs120m infrastructure for parking lot

Senior officials at Civil Secretariat decide to demolish PDMA building in order to build parking lot in its place.

PESHAWAR:

Senior officials at the Civil Secretariat have decided to demolish the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) building in order to build a parking lot in its place, The Express Tribune has learnt.

According to officials familiar with the matter, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Chief Secretary Muhammad Shahzad Arbab has already issued the directives wherein the PDMA building in the secretariat constructed at a cost Rs75 million will be demolished to establish a parking space for 30-40 official cars.

The previous Awami National Party (ANP) led government had constructed the building to house the office that copes with emergency situations in the province such as natural calamities. However, the current government has decided to do away with the building which is currently linked with 10 districts of K-P via a satellite system.

An official at the Civil Secretariat confirmed the report, adding along with the PDMA building, another one of the information department’s housing offices will be razed as well.

“The reason for the demolishing is to develop a car parking area because at the moment the secretariat does not have a parking lot inside its premises,” he said.

During a recently held meeting between senior officials, the chief secretary said the secretariat should be restored according to its “old map”, an insider informed.

Therefore, the PDMA building constructed during the tenure of former chief secretary Javed Iqbal and inaugurated in 2010 by Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, the then chief minister, will be removed and the space remade into the parking lot it was prior to the construction of PDMA office, he added.

“PDMA and Relief and Rehabilitation department offices will now be shifted to the Civil Secretariat’s Abdul Wali Khan block, which is still under construction,” the official further informed.

He lamented the PDMA building and Mian Rashid Block, named after former information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain’s son, built rather recently at a combined cost of nearly Rs120 million are being demolished just to make space to park 30-40 cars.

Furthermore, it was also learnt that the to-be-demolished PDMA building also hosts the Provincial Emergency Operation Centre (PEOC) which was built at a cost of Rs35 million and houses the satellite system which links 10 K-P districts to share information in real time through a visual display system in case of natural calamities and disasters.

The said system was meant to be extended to the rest of the districts as well but the demolition will immensely damage the infrastructure built with technical expertise.

Another official questioned the logic behind demolishing already established buildings to make space for a parking lot. He said dismantling the PEOC alone requires high technical expertise whereas, a car park can easily be built anywhere close to the secretariat’s premises.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4^th, 2013.