KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Monday decried cut in the province’s share in funds by the federal government and said Sindh should have been given Rs665 billion in toto during current fiscal year but it received only Rs402bn.

Faced with such shortage of funds, how could the province complete ongoing work on projects, said the chief minister while answering a question about official residences for prosecutors by Grand Democratic Alliance MPA Nusrat Sehar Abbasi and written and verbal queries by other lawmakers during Question Hour in the Sindh Assembly session.

He said: “The scheme for official residences was approved with an estimated cost of Rs359.161 million but it could not be completed on time due to inadequate funding and hike in the cost of construction material and labour charges over time”.

Opposition Leader Firdaus Shamim Naqvi of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf criticised the provincial government and blamed flaws in the system for delay in the projects. The flaws needed to be rectified for timely completion of the projects, he said.

“How can we complete projects when we are faced with such shortage of funds? Centre still owes us Rs253bn but despite that we carried out record uplift works last year,” said Mr Shah while asking Mr Naqvi to help Sindh get its “due share” from the Centre.

Pending cases

The chief minister, who also holds the portfolio of law, informed the assembly that a total of 42,531 criminal cases were pending disposal in 27 districts and of them 17,516 were in Karachi alone. The provincial government had introduced out-of-court settlement mechanism which would help reduce the number of pending cases and burden on courts, he said.

He said that in all 92,189 cases in the Sindh High Court and 101,059 in subordinate judiciary were pending disposal.

Mr Shah said the provincial government gave utmost priority to providing people easy access to justice and an alternative dispute resolution mechanism and measures such as mediation and conciliation were being considered through amendments in the law.

The Sindh Assembly had recently passed the Code of Civil Procedure (Amendment) Bill, 2018, paving the way for alternative mechanism for the resolution of disputes, he said.

He said that Sindh Rule of Law Road Map Project was also being studied for strengthening the criminal justice system. “The stakeholders are currently reviewing the project under the supervision of home department. Besides, prosecution services are being extended to all courts of the province including Supreme Court registry to help provide fair, speedy and inexpensive justice to common man,” he added.

There were still some questions left to be taken up when Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani announced that the one-hour Question Hour session was over and the chief minister told the house that the remaining questions might be taken up in the next session.

Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2019