ISLAMABAD:
Planning Minister Asad Umar on Monday said the federal government fully stands by its commitments relating to the ‘Greater Karachi Water Supply Project (K-IV)’.
Responding to the Sindh chief minister’s statement regarding ‘wrapping up’ of the project, he said the Centre had been regularly following up with the provincial government to move the project forward, however, the authority concerned was yet to process the revised project document.
“The project has been experiencing delays for quite some time due to design-related issues,” the minister was quoted as saying in an official statement.
The provincial government engaged the National Engineering Services Pakistan (NESPAK) to review the original design of the scheme. NESPAK completed the design review and submitted its report to the Karachi Water and Sanitation Board.
The Sindh government appointed a technical committee in Nov 2019, to scrutinise NESPAK report and to suggest the way forward. The technical committee submitted its report to the provincial government with the recommendation that the work on the existing alignment may be resumed with necessary modifications.
“Therefore, it is clear that throughout this period, the progress of the K-IV project is awaiting the provincial government’s decision,” it reads. The Ministry of Planning and the Planning Commission have been engaged with the provincial government and have repeatedly asked the latter to process the revised project document, for early execution of the project.
The matter was also discussed during the meeting of the National Economic Council on June 10, wherein it was informed that the Planning Commission had allocated the entire amount of the remaining federal share for the project, in the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) 2020-21. Further resources could be considered once the revised PC-I of the project was available.
The minister said the federal government realised the significance of the K-IV project and was committed to playing its due role, however, the execution of the project remained in the provincial domain, which needed to be expedited so that the citizens of Karachi could receive the water they badly need.
