Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah Tuesday said the public health engineering (PHE) department needed revamping and rehabilitation due to its weaker position for enhancing its capacity building and enabling it to cater the basic needs of people in an efficient manner.
The chief minister said this while presiding over a meeting to review the performance of the PHE department specially in executing development schemes of water supply and drainage system at the CM House.
The CM asked the additional chief secretary development to constitute a committee of senior officers and suggest ways and means for the up-gradation of this public importance department.
He asked him to categorise the working and responsibilities of the PHE department in detail. Qaim stated that the Sindh government had made an annual allocation of more than Rs 4 billion in current financial year to execute 235 ongoing development schemes and naturally `we want the benefits to reach the people of Sindh from this huge investment’.
He directed the officers to complete the work on these 235 schemes by March 2014. The CM said that keeping in view the defective units of water supply and drainage system in the province, a PC-I for comprehensive development scheme of block allocation at its estimated cost of Rs 4590.9 million had been approved to rehabilitate 488 non-functional units of water supply and drainage system in the province which were in addition to above ongoing schemes to be completed by March 2014.
He said the annual block allocation of Rs 1,000 million had been earmarked in current financial year to implement this scheme.
Qaim said the main problems of this department were the ownership of the public facility units, operational repair and maintenance responsibility which were to be re-assigned while revamping and upgrading PHE department under the new strategy of his administration.
He said the Sindh government was taking this issue seriously to ensure uninterrupted supply of drinking water and efficient drainage system to the people of Sindh.
The CM asked the officers to strengthen this department by virtue of human resources and sound financial position and enable it to deliver visible services and restore the confidence of the public and their officials as well.
The advisor to the CM, Chief Secretary Sajjad Saleem Hotiyana, Secretary Finance Sohail Rajput, Secretary Local Government Javaid Hanif, Secretary to CM Rai Sikandar, Special Secretary Public Health Laiq Ahmed, Chief Engineer PHE Nafees Ahmed Shaikh, Director Technical Masroor Arbab, and other officers attended the meeting.