Daily Times

DADU: The Jamshoro police on Thursday killed a robber carrying head money of Rs500,000 and arrested two others in an alleged encounter at Bolari Link road near Kotri, a small city of Jamshoro district of Sindh province.

According to a report, the killed robber was identified as Qabool Khan, alias Munir Chandio while the arrested were verified as Aziz Khan Shoro and Nizam-ud-din Shoro. Consequently, police also recovered a Kalashnikov, a repeating rifle, a TT pistol and a motorcycle from their possession.

Meanwhile, the senior superintendent of police (SSP) Pervaiz Ahmed Umrani revealed that the killed and arrested robbers were wanted in heinous crimes committed in the cities of Dadu, Jamshoro, Larkana, Qambar, Jacobabad and Sukkur districts.

RBOD-II construction restarts in full swing

The Right Bank Outfall Drain (RBOD-II) project director (PD) Chief Engineer Munwar Ali Bozdar on Thursday said that construction work of the project has been initiated at 15 sites in full swing. During an interview with Daily Times, he said that RBOD-II is a mega drainage project (273 KM) running along the Right Bank of River Indus, funded by the federal government and executed by Sindh Irrigation Department. He expressed hope that the project would be completed within stipulated period of time. He said that revised project cost-I (PC-I) of RBOD-II includes Rs54,985 Million from the federal government and Rs7,000 Million as a share of the Government of Sindh. Hence, total cost of the project amounts to Rs61,985 Million and requires 9179 acres of land.

The 273km-long RBOD-II will be connected to RBOD-I at Indus Link in Sehwan taluka and will carry the effluent dir to Arabian Sea through Gharo Creek in Thatta. The project would prevent Manchar Lake and Indus River from pollution. He asserted that originally PC-I of the drainage project RBOD-II was designed to carry 2,170 cusecs water at the cost of Rs14,000 million. However, in 2005, PC-I was revised to add a drainage unit of Baluchistan. Hence, RBOD-II was redesigned to discharge 3,525 cusecs water amounting the total cost at Rs29,217 million.

An administrative approval was issued by the ministry of water and power in Aug 2011 to complete the project in Nov 2019.

“The project administration has received only Rs2600 million and Rs3000 million from the federal government and Sindh government, respectively,” he claimed. The total cost of the project was originally Rs14,000 billion. The revised cost was calculated at Rs29.217 billion; however, the 2nd revised cost has been calculated at Rs61.985 billion.

Originally, the project deadline was July 2005, but the revised timeline was set at Dec 2010, and later it was extended to Nov 2019. Eng Bozdar said that Rs1.654 billion were already paid to the contractors while their liabilities were Rs2 billion. “Tenders of Rs23 billion were carried out, but later were halted due to uncompleted formalities,” he said adding that he has completed all post de-facto formalities to complete the task. He stated that a fully functional project support and monitoring team (PMST) is required to resolve the issues of land acquisition, execution matters and other relevant issues that fall under the scope of the project.

Furthermore, he revealed that more than 140 RDs were not executed yet, due to many reasons including awards passed by the land acquisition officers on high rates, adverse effects of law and order and litigations.

“Urgently, Rs5500 million are required to boost the progress of the RBOD-II project,” he urged adding that procurement has become mandatory for the timely completion of the project according to directives of Supreme Court of Pakistan. He said that Frontier Works Organization (FWO) may be directed to reconcile the claims with the executive engineers.

“As payment of the contractor is pending, it should be resolved that at least 50 percent of the total amount has been paid to initiate the project while the remaining amount must be paid after examining interim payment certificates (IPCs) at site,” he remarked.

Published in Daily Times, May 18^th 2018.