KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah with the assistance of the World Bank has decided to launch a Rs110 billion housing project for the flood-affected people for which a special unit would be established under the chief secretary.

This emerged on Friday in a meeting between Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah and World Bank Country Director Najy Benhassine who attended the meeting through video link from Islamabad.

The meeting was attended by ministers Dr Azra Pechuho, Manzoor Wassan, Nasir Shah Jam Khan Shoro, Zia Abbas Shah, Rasool Bux Chandio, Murtaza Wahab, Chief Secretary Sohail Rajput, P&D Chairman Hassan Naqvi, and secretaries. The bank’s team who attended the meeting in person included Program Leader Abedalrazaq Khalif, Senior Disaster Risk Management Specialist Elif Ayhan, Bilal Khalid, Kamran Akbar, Yunziyi Lag, and Farah Yamin Khan.

The chief minister said that he has already deputed teams to clear water from the flooded towns and villages. “The dewatering process is in progress and hopefully within one and half months it would be evacuated,” he said and added that he would start construction of houses for the affected people once the water is disposed of.

Shah said that the winter season was heading in, therefore we have to make housing arrangements for the people. He urged the bank to finance the housing project.

The chief minister and WB country director decided to launch the project for Rs110 billion for which a company would be established under the control of the chief secretary.

The Chief Executive Officer of the company with the support of the public and private sector would start construction for which a survey is in progress.

The chief minister took up another project with the bank, saying that the floods have destroyed the road network and sunk the drainage system in Karachi. He added that he wanted to start a project of Rs13 billion to reconstruct the damaged roads of the city. The bank committed Rs6 billion and the chief minister said he would arrange the remaining Rs7 billion from other sources.

Shah talked about the repair, and reconstruction of sewerage lines and said that the recent heavy rains have sunk them. He added that his government has worked out a Rs25 billion scheme to overhaul the sewerage system along with widening and redesigning it.

The World Bank country director agreed that the project would be financed through the KWSSIP project.

Jam Sadiq bridge

The CM took up the reconstruction of Jam Sadiq Bridge or a parallel bridge for which the bank and the Sindh government team agreed to hold a discussion next week.

Agriculture

The chief minister added that his government has prepared a scheme of Rs30 billion to provide subsidies to growers for fertilizer and certified seed. “We have to revive our flooded agro-industry by giving them some incentives,” he said and added the growers were not in such a position to buy certified seeds, fertilizers and other inputs.

The bank agreed to provide $323 billion so that growers could reclaim their lands from the floods and start the upcoming Rabi crop.