Rawalpindi Property New :Development on the back burner,

[Salman]

Rawalpindi Property New :Development on the back burner,

RAWALPINDI, Dec 31: Despite having enough funds in their kitties, the Rawal Town Municipal Administration (RTMA) and Potohar Town Municipal Administration (PTMA) have failed to launch uplift schemes though six months of fiscal year 2011-12 have gone.

The RTMA and PTMA in their annual budgets for 2011-12 allocated Rs240 million and Rs270 million respectively for the development schemes.The sources told Dawn that the municipal adminstartions sought the development schemes from local MNAs and MPAs belonging to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) but the lawmakers could not come up with any uplift project due to their internal rifts.

They said that MNA Malik Shakeel Awan, MPA Shehryar Riaz and Ziaullah Shah wanted to get maximum chunk of development funds for their constituencies as compared to MNA Hanif Abbasi and MPA Raja Hanif.

They said that in the wake of tussle among the MPs, the PML-N high-ups intervened and allocated quota for the MNAs and MPAs for the uplift schemes. They said that local leaders were of the view that the government had launched major development schemes in NA-56 of MNA Hanif Abbasi ignoring NA-55 which consists of thickly-populated areas.

They said another impediment to launch uplift schemes was that the RTMA provided Rs70 million to the City District Government Rawalpindi (CDGR) for payment of seven-month outstanding pensions to over 1,700 retired employees of the civic agency before Eidul Azha.

They said, according to law, the RTMA was not bound to provide funds to the CDGR but it acted on the direction of Punjab government in this regard. They said that the RTMA provided the amount from its development fund.

The sources said that Punjab government could not fix the tender rates for TMAs which were restrained to float the tenders for the schemes. They said as far as installation of tube wells was concerned, the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) raised objections as it wanted to take up the schemes for ensuring quality of work.

It may be mentioned here that most of the roads and streets, which have not been repaired for one year, have become bumpy and accident-prone due to indifferent attitude of the RTMA.

The roads which require urgent attention are including Tauheedi Road, Carriage Factory Road, Liaquat Road, Jinnah Road, Iqbal Road, Ghaznavi Road, Pirwadhai Road, Khayaban-i-Sir Syed Road, Gowalmandi Road, Farooq-i-Azam Road, Bohar Bazaar Road, Circular Road, Kohati Bazaar Road and others.

When contacted, Rawal Town Administrator Saif Anwar Jappa said that the development schemes could not be launched due to some problems. However, he said that he had issued the work order to launch Rs140 million development schemes in 46 union councils of the city and work on the projects would be initiated soon.

He said that the RTMA had to launch development schemes identified by local MNAs and MPAs.

Potohar Town Administrator Talat Mehmood Gondal was not available for comments.