Akhtar Shaheen Rind
KARACHI: To lure the voters ahead of local bodies upcoming phase elections, a good number of main roads in different parts of city are dug out causing inconvenience to citizen on one hand and to get budgets supported by bogus bills on other hand by the concerned officials.
For water and sewerage network, each public representative in the legislature MNAs, MPAs have allocation of funds to solve issues of public in their respective constituencies. It’s a routine practice since long to launch such schemes on ground in last week’s of budget to get a handsome percentage from contractors and to provide share of concerned officials otherwise these funds might lapse, sources informed.
In these days, one can witness that roads in almost all areas especially federal b area, north Nazimabad, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Gulistan-e-Johar are dug out and big size cemented pipes are dropped there to show public that development work is started in their areas to address issues pertaining to water and sewerage.
It is basically a strong system to grab their percentage in the name of MNAs, MPAs schemes and pay heavy budgets to contractors, a separate percentage is also withdrawn from them, so budget must not be lapsed. In such cases, mostly work orders to contractors are issued in back dates and previous approvals in a hurry to avoid any legitimate checks.
On the other hand despite hue and cry of public, officials decline to solve their issues giving reasons of short of budget while such budget are freely available on the last dates of financial year, sources told.
When statements of such schemes are prepared, an additional 270, 170 percent are applied as per market value to facilitate contractors apart from PWD rates.
Completion certificates of such work are also obtained from respective public representatives and thus public money is looted and parked in officials pockets compromising quality of work as well.