KARACHI: The Supreme Court-mandated commission on water and sanitation in Sindh on Saturday expressed serious concern over the redesigning, changing consultant and delaying the under-construction cardiac unit for children at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) and ordered an inquiry into the matter.

The head of the commission, retired Justice Amir Hani Muslim, observed that ex facie project director Tanveer Shah conducted himself in a dishonest manner. He directed the works and services department to start work on the paediatric cardiac unit without any delay and with proper work plan and timeline.

Justice Muslim, who visited the under-construction paediatric cardiac unit, in his visit note said that since the project director had relinquished the charge on the intervention of the works department and the project had been transferred to the works department with the consent of the health department as per the rules of business, an inquiry would be conducted by engineer Pheru Mal with the consent of the secretaries of works and health, consultant and contractor to settle the account between the parties and to fix responsibilities on all the persons concerned, including the project director.

Judicial commission orders immediate resumption of work on the project

The commission further said that initially the project director appointed Progressive Consultants Lahore as the consultant and later Abdul Majeed & Company was awarded the contract and the contractor started the work.

However, the project director removed the consultant in January and tenders were invited for a new consultant and it took three months to hire a consultant. The work remained suspended during the intervening period, it added.

Project director’s ‘blunders’

It further said that the new consultant was assigned the job of vetting of the existing design planning, re-planning and redesigning and it appeared that the project director had committed a series of blunders that spoke of his incompetence as in the first phase he should have exercised due care and caution while appointing the first consultant.

The commission observed that secondly the project director should also have scrutinised the designs and drawings of the first consultant after taking the NICVD management into confidence before the start of physical execution as Najma Patel, professor of paediatric cardiology, informed the commission that the project director allowed a corridor of six feet instead of 10 feet.

It further said that when the new consultant was appointed with the mandate to alter the earlier designs, the previous work done on such designs should have been properly measured to avoid any possible dispute. Adding, it said that the proposed amendments were bound to render some of the earlier work done useless, causing losses to the public exchequer and also delaying the project of direct relevance and importance to human life.

“Changing the consultants and, thus, allowing the scope of an ongoing work to be changed and so allowing public money go waste, only speaks of a callous attitude of the project director. This is an outright mockery of project management,” it added.

The commission further observed that to save his skin the project director lodged a case against the contractor apparently on the ground that the contractor had removed steel bars from the site though the work had been stopped for two to three months for want of a consultant.

It said that the criminal case against the previous contractor, in which a representative of the new contractor was a witness, prima facie was lodged by the project director to pressurise the contractor into giving up his claim to the work he had done earlier on the designs of the first consultant which was demolished by the present consultant.

Meanwhile, registrar of the commission Ghulam Mustafa Channa sent the visit note of the commission to the chief secretary of Sindh, secretaries for health and works and services and others for information and immediate action.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2018