The Prime Minister’s Office vehemently denied the media reports regarding incurring expenditure to the tune of Rs 22 million on the renovation of the bathroom of the PM’s House as no such expenditure was being made at the office.
However, repair and maintenance of PM’s Office building (formerly PM’s Secretariat) had been proposed as the same was being neglected for a decade or so, a statement issued by the PM’s Office said here the other day.
The rationale is as under- The PM’s Office, a seven-storey building, was constructed/opened in the year 1997. Since its inception, the building is being used as secretariat by the successive prime ministers and chief executive-led governments.
A number of other federal government organisations like NDMA, ERRA, NAVTEC, NCGR, PMIC, PM Youth Programme and PM’s Polio Programme were also sharing the same building. Hence, as many as 1,000 employees were using the building.
The statement said that PM’s Office building is a national asset and show window to rest of the world. However, due to poor repair and maintenance over the last decade or so, the building had not only started giving an ugly and decaying look but had posed serious health and safety threat to the employees working there.
In order to save this national asset and to ensure health and safety of the employees working in that building, an overhauling of the building had been suggested which included repair and maintenance of 74 bathrooms and ablution places located in all the seven floors of the building at a cost of Rs 21.821 million.
While the aforementioned expenditure remained the accumulated cost of being neglected more than a decade, the ultimate beneficiaries were more than 1,000 employees of various government organisations working in the building.