In session: Opposition MPAs quibble over hiring consultants for development projects

ANP’s Sardar Hussain Babak says govt did not take them on board before making this ‘costly’ decision.

PESHAWAR: The government came under fire in the provincial assembly over hiring consultants to oversee development projects on Wednesday.

The floor opened to a debate over hiring consultants, which is a part of the opposition’s eight-point agenda.

Awami National Party’s  (ANP) parliamentary leader Sardar Hussain Babak said this would burden the provincial legislature by 35% to 45% with additional expenditure. Hiring consultants could lead to duplicate as well as increased costs in getting projects done, he added.



Babak felt they had a proper system in place for projects and the government should have strengthened the existing system.

The government did not take the opposition on board while making this decision, claimed Babak. “This will only centralise corruption and provide a legal cover for it.” Consultants were not responsible to anyone and there is no way to keep an eye on what they were doing, argued the ANP leader. He further added that hiring consultants would also have a negative impact on provincial autonomy. According to Babak, out of the 23 consultants hired for buildings, 18 were hired from the province. Of 19 hired for roads, 11 were from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) while five of the nine hired for bridges came from other provinces.

Qaumi Watan Party’s Sikandar Sherpao said the government was pursuing makeshift policies and no development work has started despite a passage of over eight months. It has only added an element of duality to the development process and the government should have focused on department instead of consultants, he insisted.

Sherpao added if K-P itself does not care for its engineering firms then it will be foolish to expect Punjab and Sindh to do so. Before he took his seat, he urged the government to rethink its strategy.

“Not a single brick has been laid anywhere in the province out of the Rs83 billion development budget,” said Pakistan Peoples Party’s Saleem Khan. Consultants will only collect their dues and leave, added Saleem.

Not to be left out of the fray, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) Munawar Khan stated the development process could not start because of the consultants. He said the government should hire such specialists only for major projects.

Aurangzeb Naluhta, Malik Riaz and Nawabzada Wali Mohammad also spoke on the topic.

Minister for Local Government (LG) and Rural Development Inayatullah Khan defended the practice and said previously money was embezzled from projects but hiring consultant firms was now included in the project cost.

Inayatullah said such hiring was a standard practice everywhere across the world and will lead to early project completion besides improvement in feasibility, design and monitoring projects.

He rejected the notion that there was no way to monitor what the consultants were doing; if they are found guilty of wrongdoings, consultants lose their bank guarantees and security.

According to the LG minister, while Rs12 billion has been allocated for the road development budget this year, last year about 48% of the budget was utilized while 22% was utilized out of the Rs1.2 billion allocations for buildings during the same period. The session was in progress till the filing of this report.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 6^th, 2014.