PESHAWAR - Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak has directed the concerned authorities to convert maximum schemes of water supply, irrigation, street and road lights on solar energy in the new fiscal year.
This is the only option to meet the challenges like loadshedding that would also give an efficient solution and will manage these schemes locally.
He also asked for making the foolproof arrangements and quality control of all schemes in the public sectors, including food, agriculture, public health engineering, health, communication and works, in the new ADP.
Similarly, he underlined the need of introducing mobile testing laboratories in all sectors so that on-the-spot testing and quality could be ensured and the trend of delayed and self-desired quality results could be discouraged.
Khattak also directed for interlinking and streamlining the quality control sections of all the government departments with research centres of the concerned universities for improved results.
He also constituted a high powered committee to be headed by an additional chief secretary with secretary higher education as focal person of the committee.
Khattak was chairing ADP preparation and review meeting at CM House Peshawar wherein the developmental needs and new ADP schemes in water supply, public health engineering, local government and rural development and communication and works departments were taken into stock and necessary decisions were taken.
The meeting was attended by Finance Minister Muzafar Said Advocate, Minister LG Inayatullah, Minister of Revenue Ali Amin Gandapur, Adviser to Chief Minister on C&W Akbar Ayub Khan, Adviser to CM P&D Mian Khaleequr Rehman, Focal Person Peshawar Mega Project Shaukat Ali yousafzai, Chief Secretary Abid Saeed, Additional Chief Secretary Muhammad Azam Khan and administrative secretaries and high ups of the concerned departments.
The chief minister made it clear that promotion of solarisation in all social and productive sectors of the province would greatly contribute in avoiding the hardships emanated due to loadshedding as well as drastic savings could be made in electricity consumption, financial resources and precious time of the public.
Khattak expressed satisfaction that the experiments so far made in solarisation of public health engineering and local government departments, especially in converting the tubewells and street/road lights into solar energy, were much encouraging.
He, however, asked for reducing the consumption of batteries in the ongoing and new solar schemes, ensuring maintenance and cleanliness of solar schemes on regular basis and evolving mechanism for more improvement in its performance.
Khattak, while talking about electricity run schemes of PHE department, said that the continuous loadshedding not only disrupted water supply to the consumers but the department had to pay over Rs200 million only on electricity bills while solarisation provided a big remedy in this regard.
He said, besides overcoming the issue of loadshedding and saving energy and funds, solarisation could reduce the spending on development budget that had presently soared to Rs675 million.
He directed to complete all ongoing water supply schemes by 30th June and outsourcing the process accordingly.
He cautioned that failing this target would tantamount to punishment of the concerned officers, besides stoppage of fresh funds.
Khattak also asked for outsourcing the social, developmental and service delivery sectors including the highways with touristic importance.
He said government had to perform the duty of vigilance and quality control in service delivery system and not to indulge in commercial activities.
Khattak said timely and quality completion of development schemes in government sector always remained a question mark wherein neither the people were satisfied nor they were properly benefitted by it.
About delay in completion of Malam Jabba Road and lack of funds and some other highways leading to picnic spots, he strictly directed the authorities to strike agreement with BoK for its funding so that its completion could be ensured by next fiscal year.