ISLAMABAD: Members of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Planning have blamed the government for using development projects for political means possibly with the aim that it would give leverage to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the upcoming elections.

During the committee’s session on Wednesday, the opposition parties read out a special federal development budget for the current financial year and criticised the incumbent government for expenditure on projects with no progress.

Even chairman of the committee Abdul Majeed Khan Khanankhail, who belongs to the PML-N, said that a policy decision pertaining to development projects was needed as delays in construction led to cost escalations.

Sheikh Salahuddin of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) said that projects had been dumped and there was no forum to seek their progress report.

“The Karachi and the Hyderabad packages were announced when we voted for the prime minister. We provided the list of projects based on their priority — but nobody knows what happened to them,” he said.

There was no progress on the K-4 water supply project which was to be completed at a cost of Rs25 billion by the middle of 2017, he added. “Now its cost has been raised to Rs40bn, with Rs29bn already spent and only 15 per cent of the work has been completed,” Mr Salahuddin pointed out.

Responding to his query, officials of the Planning Commission said that funds of the federal component had already been transferred, but the execution authority for K-4 and the S-3 waste water outflow project was the Sindh government.

Dr Nafisa Shah of the Pakistan Peoples Party said that almost all development projects of Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Ltd (SNGPL) were in central Punjab and one division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. However, she added, the Sui Southern Gas Company was not even taking up projects to supply gas to an industrial estate in Khairpur, which was one of the largest gas producing districts of the country.

She pointed out to the ruling party several projects with unclear titles amounting to around Rs40bn and said that these projects like building local roads — mainly in Punjab — should not be part of the federal agenda.

“Such politically motivated and micro-level projects do not serve the purpose of planning and development,” said Ms Shah, adding that unfortunately this incorrect approach had been adopted by all governments.

Junaid Akbar of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf also expressed similar views and shared his own experience that despite arranging funds from the KP government his project was turned down at the SNGPL head office based in Lahore.

The SNGPL official said that schemes to 18,000 kilometre pipelines had been approved for the current fiscal year, but the company was able to execute work at only 9,500km due to financial constraints and other issues. The remaining target could not be completed during the current fiscal year, he added.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2018