LARKANA, May 20: The Asian Development Bank-funded Sindh Devolved Social Sector Programme (SDSSP), which aims to improve education and health facilities, has fallen victim to traditional bureaucratic lethargy as the district government has not been able to draw even a penny from the millions of rupees of allocated funds since three years.

Sources in the district government told Dawn on Friday that the three-year project was launched in 2004-05 in the district with an allocation of Rs27 million and Rs18 million, respectively, for the education and health departments.

The education department was asked to spend the funds on constructing buildings for shelter-less schools and science laboratories and other facilities at the schools which lacked them, the sources said. The department was also advised to hire teaching staff for 170 primary and secondary schools and undertake teachers’ training programme but it failed to do the required jobs and the Rs2.5 million funds allocated for the purpose were left unutilised, the sources said.

Similarly, the health department was asked to purchase six ambulances from the Rs7.8 million at their disposal, and spend Rs6.939 million on buying dental units, ultrasound and X-ray machines, an ophthalmology unit and other instruments but it, too, preferred to leave the funds untouched, the sources said.

District Coordination Officer (DCO) Mohammad Naseer Jamal who convened a meeting on Jan 19, 2007 expressed dissatisfaction over the two departments’ progress on the SDSSP and urged them to use up their revenue allocations, the sources said.

On the other hand, the ADP kept pumping funds into the project and in 2005-06 it again made an allocation of Rs12.567 million for education and Rs18.851 million for health sectors. In 2006-07 the bank made further allocation of Rs10.566 (education) and Rs15.848 million (health).

Funds for the two consecutive financial years’ had not yet been released to the district while the officials of education and health departments had still not been able to prepare PC-I, now called Annual Sector Plan (ASP), for the spending, the sources linked to the project told this scribe.

It was the main reason the finance department was reluctant to release funds allocated during fiscal years 2005-06 and 2006-07, the sources said.

SDSSP Consultant Fid Hussein Rind, in the meanwhile, has been transferred and nobody has been appointed to replace him since two months.

The sources in the health department said that procedural bottlenecks were to blame for delay in tendering for the purchase of ambulances, instruments, ultrasound and X-ray machines.

It seemed contradictory that on the one hand funds had been allocated to recruit teachers while on the other the Sindh government had kept bar on new appointments.

The Jan 19 meeting had expressed surprise at the finding that the education department had not even prepared schedule for the teachers’ training programme. The DCO gave the EDO of education 15-day period to complete the job but he failed to do so, the sources said.

No other meeting since Jan 19 had so far been held to review progress on the programme, the sources said.