HYDERABAD: Bad governance and violation of orders of Supreme Court (SC) has been observed in Sindh Coal Authority, a monitoring authority on coal reserves of Sindh.
The key executives’ posts of director administration and finance, chief engineer, deputy director, executive engineers and others have been assigned to non-cadre officers and on deputation basis which was clear violation of SCP decision. Authority has been doing work making buildings, roads, rest houses etc to violate actual mandate to monitor coal exploration and mining.
All routine work was being run on an ad hoc basis. A Personal Secretary Arjan Kumar has been posted on administration post of grade 19 of director administration and finance. He was promoted from grade 16 to grade 18 within some years.
To support blue-eyed officers, an engineering wing of civil work has been established at Sindh Coal Authority, which is violation of original Act of Authority. All officers have been posted on deputation basis from works and services and roads departments. Ali Akbar Abro a relative of very close aid to ruling party has been posted on important post of grade 19, chief engineer/director engineering at Sindh Coal Authority to run projects of billions of rupees, which is clearly violation of Supreme Court’s decision.
Supreme Court has imposed ban on deputation.
Many projects of millions of rupees civil works at Tharparkar including six numbers of officer’s residence bungalows, fourteen servant quarters, a six bedrooms rest house, thousands meter’s boundary wall, internal colony road etc are running on risk without any proper supervision of site engineers and supervisors. The contractors are doing work on their own without any monitoring. It has also been revealed old building materials including tears, guarders, doors, windows, and tiles, steels gates etc has been sold to contractors without any open bidding or auction.
Sindh Coal Authority was established through an act passed from Sindh Assembly during first government of Benazir Bhutto to monitor and explore coal reserves of Sindh and to attract local and foreign investors to invest and install power plants on coal to escape power shortage in country but Authority has been doing work of making buildings to keep support corrupt officers.
Recently an application was filed in Supreme Court regarding bad governance, corruption and deputation, after continuous hearing Supreme Court gave a clear decision on application, that Authority will do actual work on coal as per it’s Act and rest of all projects of making of buildings, roads, rest houses, Reverse Osmosis plants and others would be transferred to relevant departments but no any action has been taken in this regard except shifting of RO to its respective department, Special Initiative Department.
Published in Daily Times, August 26th 2017.
