No longer required: Sukkur urban services remove officials for poor performance

The NSUSC has failed to deliver despite their high budget.

SUKKUR: After receiving numerous complaints from the general public and elected representatives, the North Sindh Urban Services Corporation (NSUSC) management removed the organisation’s managing and operations directors.

The officers, despite reportedly receiving salaries between Rs600,000 and Rs800,000 a month, failed to do their job. According to sources, the NSUSC management has decided to remove more officers from the utility, including managers for capital works, customer care, water and waste water and others due to their poor performance.

Five posts including managing, operations and finance directors, and human resources manager have been lying vacant for more than two months. The Asian Development Bank had advanced a loan of Rs40 billion to the utility to help modernise the water supply, drainage and sanitation in five cities but despite that living conditions in the cities remain dismal as heaps of garbage, overflowing drains and the supply of contaminated water has started to symbolise the utility.

Failing to deliver

Since its establishment in January 2011, the NSUSC — which is responsible for water supply, drainage and sanitation in the five cities of upper Sindh of Sukkur, Rohri, Shikarpur, Khairpur and Larkana — has failed to live up to the expectations of the citizens despite spending billions of rupees.

According to sources, the employees of NSUSC have been divided into two groups and both groups keep themselves busy in trying to undermine the other rather than working. As if supply of contaminated water, over flowing drains and poor condition of sanitation was not enough to agitate the citizens in Sukkur, the utility has started to dig up roads and streets of the city to lay a water supply pipeline. Sources claimed the digging work is being carried out without any proper planning and resultantly the same roads and streets have been dug more than twice. The laying of these pipelines was to be completed by December 2013 but due to poor planning, the work might take another year to complete.

Sources further claimed that most of the appointments in the utility have been made under political influence and such people are proving to be a burden to the utility because they refuse to perform their duties.

The ‘insider’ view

NSUSC chairperson Abdul Jabbar Memon told The Express Tribune that the officers were removed from service due to numerous complaints against them. Talking about the removal of some other officers, he said that the decision to renew their contract is up to the managing director. When questioned about the appointment of a new managing director and director operations, he said that both positions will be filled within the next couple of days.

“What is the point of keeping officers that, despite drawing such large salaries, fail to live up to public expectations,” said Memon, admitting that NSUSC has failed to deliver. However, he added that corrective measures are being taken to improve the utility’s public image and service.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 14^th, 2014.