Daily Times

KARACHI: In order to develop engineering projects on modern lines and bringing changes to run affairs of this vital segment, six districts of Karachi have been brought into four zones.

This will supplement the monitoring efficiency of engineers and district staff in order to bring positive change in the development schemes.

This step will also help segregate the mingling of civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and information technology engineering monitoring projects jobs.

On directive of Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar, re-structuring of Engineering Department of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) will help stopping culture of stop-gap arrangements while putting appropriate engineer to monitor development projects besides to streamline department development and other activities.

Dr Ashgar Abbas, the KMC Metropolitan Commissioner, is structuring laws in department.

Under fresh re-structuring order, six districts with four chief engineers and two acting chief engineers would be posted and would head projects in Karachi. Besides separate chief engineers would be responsible supervising building, engineering and mechanical departments’ development projects.

Earlier, several officials in KMC Engineering Department had been working without any assignment. A number of officials awaiting assignments had been unable to deliver any good for their respective sections.

All officers of chief engineer, head of zones shall be responsible to monitor execution and implementation of their respective area schemes through their lower tiers.

All officer of chief engineer, head of zone shall have their accounts section and contract management section.

Each chief engineer, head of zone, shall furnish proposal of placing working service of available staff for lower tiers with consent of director general technical service KMC in four working days after issuance of circular soon in this regard.

The EM chief engineer shall propose engineering staff placement to facilitate engineering works and in each referred zones keep close coordination with the chief engineer (Civil).

The remaining sections like administration IQC, Design and Account Office of Director General TS, KMC secretarial shall continue to work to provide assistance and guideline to all chief engineers.

The mayor and deputy mayor now can supervise ongoing development projects in city and would have a say in financial set up. They could take any financial decision on such development projects after this new set up.

After this development, projects like building of sidewalks, roads, underpasses, flyovers, parks, playgrounds etc that had not been supervised properly earlier and also facing impediment would be carried out smoothly.

Due to lack of performance, Local Government Department (LGD) had earlier set up a Project Directorate (PD) under the special secretary for looking after development projects of KMC.

The engineers and officials of KMC are now under a fresh set up would and have no bindings on them to report to LGD or PD.

Shabihul Hussain, Najeeb Ahmed, Sami Khan, Muhammad Zafar Khan Baloch, SM Taha and Anis Ahmed Khan will now be responsible for monitoring and implementation etc on development works in city.

KMC Engineering Department is working with 903 employees, including 109 officers including director general, 4 chief engineers, deputy chief engineer, super dented engineer, executive engineer, director planning, and other side engineers posted.

The revenues stands to Rs 168 million per year and expenditures comes around Rs 478.298 million annually. The salary expenditures stands to Rs 254.053 million, development funds stands at Rs 3762.418 million and Province and District ADP allocation comes to Rs 7034.60 million in current fiscal year 2017-18.

Published in Daily Times, October 25^th 2017.