Appointment of independent directors for projects

Islamabad: The ministries and departments have become a stumbling block to Planning Commission (PC) directives of appointment of independent Project Directors (PDs) in the development projects, which might cost Rs 100 million or above.

In most of the cases, the department heads are generally working as PDs in such projects and are least interested in implementing the 2004 decision of the Executive Committee of National Economic Council (Ecnec), which was considered to be one of the crucial steps for timely executing the projects.

PC, in a recently completed exercise, observed that appointments of independent PDs in most of the projects were not made, due to which the timely execution of the schemes remained shaky, causing huge losses to the exchequer.

Furthermore, the PDs working in some projects have not been delegated financial powers. Poor governance, lack of decision making, and lack of coordination have caused serious challenges to government drive for development.

These bottlenecks have been identified as main reasons, which dented government efforts to develop various sectors of economy in real sense despite the fact that the government had continuously been increasing the allocations for development budget in the last three to four years.

A senior government official said that most of the development projects had part-time PDs and they were not willing to lose these part-time jobs due to which they draw more money than from their real jobs. The PC is of the view that social sectors are, not at all, paying heed to the directives issued by Ecnec in 2004.

The official said that if looked into aspect and PC took a detailed exercise, the number of part-timer PDs would definitely have increased in the last four years or so.

In the budget for the current year, implementation of development projects had been accorded highest priority by the government to help provide basic facilities like education, health, water supply, sewerage, electricity to masses in achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The PC kept reminding the executing agencies, which are federal and provincial ministries and departments, to appoint independent PDs for all projects costing Rs 100 million and above, and establish Planning and Monitoring Cells.

Keeping these instances in view, some independent analysts are of the view that PC is not having the required cooperation to implement its decisions timely and properly. Almost all ministries gave cold response to the directives of the PC, but the latter remained ineffective to take any step.