Rs 200 million allocated for infrastructure uplift: Mustafa

City nazim Mustafa Kamal informed the business community that a signal road connecting Site industrial area with the airport would be constructed.
Speaking at a meeting of Site Association of Industries (SAI) on Saturday, he said a plan in this regard has been prepared and work on this project would be started in a few days.
He said underpasses at Nazimabad, Civic Centre and Gharibabad and an overhead bridge at Time Medicos would be constructed and added ninety-nine percent projects would be completed by June 2006.
He said he has allocated Rs 200 million for the development of infrastructure in each industrial estate.
The city nazim said sophisticated machinery worth Rs 600 million would be imported to meet any eventuality arises out of natural calamities in future. The equipment includes duper, trapped person locator, etc.
He noted his predecessor had prepared Rs 29 billion Tameer-e-Karachi programme but not a single penny was allocated for the development of infrastructure in the city's industrial estates.
He said when he took over the charge of city nazim, he visited Korangi industrial area and ordered immediate start of work on revamping of water supply and sewerage system.
He said this industrial zone has neither sewerage nor water supply lines. Industries were discharging wastewater in open plots or roads and purchasing water from tankers. He said work on water and sewerage lines is in progress and completed soon.
The city nazim noted the city's industrial estates are generating around 67 percent of total revenue of Pakistan and Site industrial area alone providing around 550,000 jobs. Neglecting its infrastructure development has no justification, he added.
He feared if these industrial areas remain neglected, industrialists may shift their units to some other location, which will result in unemployment. No government can afford unemployment, he said. He said he has carefully prepared infrastructure development plan for all the five industrial estates in the city.
He said he will depute one of the highest offers of the city government to keep in touch with the SAI and assured the business community that their problems would be solved on priority bases.
He said he would keep a close interaction with the business community so that he should know their problems and make policies to resolve them.
Welcoming the guest, SAI chairman Dr Mirza Ikhtiar Baig said despite repeated requests, the city government and the KWSB have not done much to solve the water problem of the industrial area and it is still getting 5-6 MGD water against its requirement of 30 MGD.