PESHAWAR, Nov 11: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Annual Development Programme for the ongoing financial year has made a slow start as work on hundreds of new projects has yet to commence, according to official sources.

The execution of new development schemes is expected to start in January next year, a well placed functionary told Dawn on Monday.

“Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf wants to bring in private consultants to oversee development projects’ implementation,” Prof Mohammad Ibrahim, the provincial president of Jamaat-i-Islami, a component of the provincial coalition government said, when contacted.

He said ADP’s progress would improve once the government completed the consultants’ selection process.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa minister for local government and rural development Inayatullah Khan told Dawn that execution of new development projects would begin by January 2014 as the provincial government was hiring consultants and their selection would be finalised after some time.

A planning and development department official said PTI wanted to reduce the provincial government’s role in development projects’ execution and involve experts from the private sector to take over the role.

“The government believes this (consultants’ involvement) would put tabs to misappropriation of public funds as a large amount of public money goes down the drain because of corrupt practices and leakages in the system,” said Mr Inayatullah.The consultants, said the minister, were being hired with two explicit aims: end the prevalent culture of commissions (bribes) and ensure quality in the development projects’ implementation.

The consultants, added the minister, would be involved in preparing feasibility studies and designs of public sector development projects, planning and monitoring execution of development works, and completion of projects.

“Payment would be made (to contractors) for the completed work if the consultant concerned is satisfied,” said Mr Inayatullah. He said the government believed it would be easy to make consultants accountable and take action against them if the work completed on a project was not satisfactory.

However, the reform process has a flip side to it. A private contractor, when contacted, said that the government had not yet started giving contracts for initiating work on new development projects though the first four months of the current financial year had passed.

“The 2013-14 financial year is into its 5th month, not a single new project has been initiated in anywhere in the province,” said the contractor. He said his firm would shortly go out of business. “I am working on a couple of schemes (ongoing) that would be completed in the near future, if the new projects are not launched I would need to do something different (business) to remain economically productive,” said the owner of a small construction company from district Swabi.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Annual Development Programme for the current financial year involves a total outlay of Rs118 billion. It involves two components: locally funded and foreign funded. The locally funded component involves a total allocation of Rs83 billion, including Rs45 billion to be spent on ongoing schemes and Rs37 billion on 374 new development projects.

This means work on projects involving Rs37 billion has not yet started.

An official development planner said work on the new schemes (small works) traditionally got underway in the end of July or the start of August every year. According to him, the government’s departments start assenting approvals to small development works right from the beginning of every new fiscal and make financial releases to new works as and when they are ready to be launched.

However, according to information collected by Dawn, the hiring of consultants is not the only reason behind the delay in launching the new schemes.

The provincial government, said the contractor from Swabi, was introducing the computerized system of filling tender documents. The computerization of tender documents, said an official, made part of the PTI government’s reform agenda.

“This can be very crucial as the current documentation process is tedious and a lot of public money goes wasted as a result of corrupt practices,” said a senior government functionary. He said the tender documents needed to be changed and the computerisation of contract documents would hopefully result into ensuring, at least, some degree of transparency.

The government’s reform priorities include computerising official record and issuance of vital documents, automation of government procurement processes, and web based tendering process work on which, according to sources, is under progress.

“The departments concerned have stopped issuing contracts for new projects as they say the process would get underway once the computerisation of tender documents is finalised,” said the contractor.

According to officials, while the provincial government has been working on involving consultants to oversee the implementation of new development projects, there are some important issues that have yet to be decided.

The government might need to review its policy of involving consultants in all the new projects. “This would create problems as if consultants are going to be hired even for small development projects this would make things difficult,” an official admitted while replying to a question.

He said chief minister Pervez Khattak wanted consultants to be hired for projects of all sizes. “Hopefully, he would agree to involve consultants for projects medium to large in size,” said a government functionary.

The decision to hire consultants is likely to escalate government’s costs of executing development works as the private sector experts charge a reasonably amount of money for every service rendered.

However, many believe, it would be money worth spending as their involvement would hopefully improve quality of works (construction) and the public money being wasted due to leakages in the system might also be saved to an extent.

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