Those who attended the meeting include Minister for Population Welfare Mumtaz Jakhrani, Minister for Works & Services Imdad Pitafi, Chief Secretary Rizwan Memon, Additional Chief Secretary (Dev) Mohammad Waseem, Principal Secretary to CM Naveed Kamran Baloch, provincial secretaries Laeeq Ahmed, Aijaz Memon and other concerned officers. During the meeting, Sindh Minister for Population Welfare Mumtaz Jakhrani said that there were 64 family planning vehicles equipped with a small operation theater and other related facilities were provided by federal government about six year ago to launch family planning drive all over Sindh. He added that the vehicles were not strong enough to move in rural areas with such a heavy load of small OT theater and related facilities. Therefore, the purpose could not be achieved.
The chief minister taking policy decision directed the chief secretary to work out a plan to dispose of family planning vehicles and also plan to dispose of other Sindh government vehicles abandoned at Balochistan House, Nazarat and at Sindh Secretariat. "Make a team of honest and good officers to auction these vehicle in a transparent way," he directed the chief secretary.
Secretary Population Mr Laiq Ahmed said that there was a development portfolio of Rs 1,564.314 million to execute six schemes. He added that the allocation for current year is Rs 745 million. Out of six only two are on-going and four are new schemes. Giving details of the schemes, the secretary said that the scheme for construction of office/hostel/residential building for population training institute at Karachi was launched at Rs 119 million. The government has released 91.5 million has been provided to Works & Services Department in July 2016 but no progress has been reported so far.
The chief minister directed Minister for Works & Services Imdad Pitafi to activate his department because the development of all the departments was stuck up at their end. He directed Minister Population to personally take up the execution of works with Minister Works.
Laeeq told the meeting that a Coasted Implementation Plan (CIP) for family planning phase-I has been approved for 10 districts, Thar, Thatta/Sujawal, Gadap, Kashmore, Hyderabad, Larkana, Sukkur, Naushehroferoze and Dadu for Rs 890.314 million against which the government has released Rs 169.250 million. The work was in progress.
Mumtaz Jakhrani said that a scheme to construct Regional Director Officer at Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas was approved at Rs 90 million but due to non-availability of land the work has not been started. On this the chief minister directed chief secretary to provide them the land of Forest department at Hyderabad for constructing Regional office of the population Welfare Department. The chief secretary decided to convene a joint meeting of population and Forest department to hand over the land.
Secretary Population Laiq said that a new scheme of Rs 100 million is being worked out to develop a web-based monitoring system of family planning and reproductive health. The chief minister directed population department to execute their schemes on priority basis. "You have only six schemes and you can not execute them which is surprising for me," he said and directed them to approve their new schemes at the earliest.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017