Islamabad: Financial crisis aggravates funds shortage affects CDA’s mega projects

[Naveed Yaseen]

* Maintenance of residential units, water supply and sewerage systems comes to a halt

By Fazal Sher

ISLAMABAD: The financial crisis has badly hit the Capital Development Authority (CDA), as funds shortage has not only affected the pace of its ongoing mega projects, the maintenance of residential units and water supply system in the city have also came to a halt, CDA sources told Daily Times on Wednesday.

Projects shelved: They said the financial crisis in the popularly known moneyed civic agency were aggravating day by day compelling its bosses to shelve projects which were in pipeline and avoid maintenance work.

Service Wing: CDA Service Wing has directed the Directorate of Maintenance to entertain only unavoidable complaints regarding maintenance work as the civic agency’s Finance Wing has released meager fund to the Service Wing for this purpose, maintained the sources.

It is learnt that due to shortage of funds the Directorate of Maintenance is only entertaining complaints of the influential people or who approach the bigwigs of the authority. The complaints cell established in different sectors by CDA is receiving hundreds of complaints daily but CDA the directorate concerned is not addressing them due to shortage of funds, said the sources.

Water Supply Wing: According to the sources, the CDA Finance Wing has also failed to release required funds to its Water Supply Directorate, which has badly affected the maintenance work of 187 tube wells in the city, which supply over 7 MGD water daily, and maintenance of water supply lines. “On the one hand depleting water table in Islamabad has alarmingly reduced the water generation, on the other hand poor maintenance of tube wells is further reducing the water supply,” they said.

Sources said the tube wells that were designed to produce 400 to 500-gallons water per minute were generating only 40 to 50 gallons water per minute due to depleting water table and poor maintance. “Current water crisis would further aggravate if the CDA failed to carry out proper maintenance of tube well and water supply lines,” they feared.

They said CDA had not only stopped maintenance of residential units but also halted the maintenance of decades old sewerage system due to which gutters were flowing and not only polluting the environment but also marring the beauty of the city.

It is learnt that CDA is left with just Rs 2 billion after using up most of its reserve funds and the money generated from sale of plots during different auctions and launch of I-14 and I-15 sectors. The CDA had announced Rs 28.851 billion budget for the year 2009-10, said the sources, adding, if CDA’s financial health continued to deteriorate in the next few weeks, the ongoing development schemes in the city would come to a halt.

Sources said if cash did not pour into the authority’s treasury at once it might delay projects including construction of Zero Point Interchange, Dualisation of Lethrar road, up-gradation of F-9 Park, construction of Lake View Park phase-II, Development of D-12 and construction of Cultural Complex at Shakarparian.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...009_pg11_4