Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Chief Minister (CM) Pervez Khattak has directed the concerning authorities to convert maximum schemes of water supply, irrigation, street and road lights to solar energy in the new fiscal year as this is the only sustainable option to meet the challenges of load-shedding.
He also asked for making foolproof arrangements and quality control of all schemes in public sectors including food, agriculture, public health engineering, health, communication and works in the new Annual Development Programme (ADP).
Similarly, he underlined the need of introducing mobile testing laboratories in all sectors and adding schemes in the new ADP accordingly so that on-the-spot testing and quality could be ensured and the trend of delayed and self-desired quality results could be discouraged.
He also directed for interlinking and streamlining the quality control sections of all government departments with research centres of the concerning universities for improved results.
Khattak also constituted a high-powered committee to be headed by an additional chief secretary with secretary higher education as a focal person of the committee.
He was chairing ADP preparation and review meeting at CM House Peshawar wherein the developmental needs and new ADP schemes in water supply, public health engineering, local government and rural development and communication and works departments were taken into stock and necessary decisions were taken.
Finance Minister Muzafar Said Advocate, Minister LG InayatUllah, Minister Revenue Ali Amin Gandapur, Advisor to Chief Minister on C&W Akbar Ayub Khan, Advisor to CM P&D Mian Khaleequr Rehman, Focal Person Peshawar Mega Project Shaukat Ali Yousaf Zai, Chief Secretary Abid Saeed, Additional Chief Secretary Muhammad Azam Khan and administrative secretaries attended the meeting.
The chief minister made it clear that promoting ‘solarisation’ in all social and productive sectors of the province would greatly contribute in avoiding the hardships emanated due to load-shedding as well as drastic savings could be ensured in electricity consumption, financial resources and precious time of the public. He expressed satisfaction that the experiments so far made in solarisation of public health, engineering and local government departments, especially in converting the tube wells and street/road lights into solar energy were much encouraging.
However, he asked for reducing the consumption of batteries in the ongoing and new solar schemes, ensuring maintenance and cleanliness of solar schemes on regular basis and evolving mechanism for more improvement in its performance.
Pervez Khattak while talking about electricity run schemes of PHE department said that the continuous load-shedding not only disrupted water supply to the consumers but the department had to pay over Rs200 million only for electricity bills while ‘solarisation’ could prove to be a remedy in this regard.
He said that besides overcoming the chances of load-shedding and saving energy and funds, solarisation could reduce the spending on the developmental budget that had presently soared to Rs675 million. He directed to complete all ongoing water supply schemes by 30th June and outsourcing the process accordingly. He cautioned that failing this target would be tantamount to the punishment of the concerned officers besides stoppage of fresh funds.
He also asked for outsourcing the social, developmental and service delivery sectors including the highways with touristic importance. He said that government had to perform the duty of quality control in service delivery system and not indulge itself in commercial activities. He said timely and quality completion of developmental schemes in government sector always remained a question mark wherein neither the people were satisfied nor properly benefitted from it.
With regards to the delay in completion of Malam Jabba road, lack of funds and some other highways leading to picnic spots, he strictly directed the authorities to strike an agreement with Bank of Khyber (BoK) for its funding so that the completion of projects could be ensured by the next fiscal year.