HYDERABAD: The army would supervise and ensure desilting of drains in Hyderabad, it was decided after a detailed discussion with the divisional and district administrations here recently.

According to the decisions taken at the July 29 meeting held at the headquarters of 18 Division, the army would only supervise the work while the deputy commissioner of Hyderabad and Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) would handle contractual procedures and formalities.

The commissioner and DC confirmed the above-mentioned decision on Tuesday.

The scope of work would be finalised by Wasa while army teams would ensure execution of work as per contract and forward a progress report to headquarters.

It was decided that payment to contractors would be released after recommendation from the headquarters of 55-Brigade and approval from 18 Division Headquarters. The army would submit recommendations regarding performance of the contractors.

According to Commissioner Abbas Baloch, it would be a great assistance to be provided to the district administration. “We are thankful to the army for this technical assistance as we want to make sure that there is no hanky-panky in works,” he said, adding that the army teams would supervise overall operations of the desilting of drains. “Payments will only be released after army’s recommendations for the given works’ required procedure,” he said.

Hyderabad DC Fuad Soomro confirmed that the desilting operations would be executed by Wasa, but supervised by army teams. He said Wasa would choose contractors and define the scope of the work.

Presiding over a meeting on rain emergency on Tuesday, the Sindh chief minister had said that the provincial government had allocated Rs70m for Hyderabad division for desilting of storm-water drains. He said the funds were to be utilised for generators and fuel.

According to the commissioner, previous year’s Rs5m allocation had been released to the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (HMC) and Wasa. Of the recent Rs70m allocations, he said, Rs40m would be released for Hyderabad district alone. “We can arrange more funds if situation warrants so [during rain emergency],” he said. The remaining amount of the Rs70m would be utilised for other districts, he said.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2020