Sindh government abolishes project allowances

In a bid to curtail non-development expenditures, Sindh government has abolished all project allowances given to hundreds of employees/officers working in various projects running under the administrative departments, Business Recorder learnt on Monday.
Informed sources inside the Finance Department told this scribe that on the directives of competent authorities, Finance Department had issued a letter few days back in which it was stated that all departments should not release funds to running projects in the head of project allowances from next fiscal year.
Sindh government took this very un-popular decision while following the footsteps of federal government where the project allowances were already been abolished in order to save the non-development expenditures, they said. Copies of such letter had been forwarded to secretaries of all concerned departments of Sindh government including subsidiaries bodies where various projects were running, they said.
In this connection, a high level official of P&D told Business Recorder on condition of keeping his name as secret that currently, there were more than 25 projects running under various administrative departments. And, more than 2,000 employees/officers were affiliated in those projects, he added. He said that a large number of employees/officers working in projects were contract-base and their contracts were subject to be extended in case of extension of concerned projects.
He termed this decision of Sindh government very unpopular and said that implementation of such decision was very hard job for the politically motivated implementers. It may be noted here that recently, authorities of P&D department had approved PC-1 of Monitoring and Evaluation Cell (MEC) in which over Rs 13 million were allocated in the head of project allowances, they said. It is matter of great interest that though MEC is not a project but is a subsidiary body of P&D, but a large number of officers/employees working in this cell are getting hefty project allowances while their salaries were also lucrative, they added.
Besides, employees/officers working in another project namely "Directorate of Hyderabad Development Package (HDP)" are also getting hefty allowances and salaries along with hundreds of more employees and officers of many other projects, they informed. A high level officer of services and general administration and co-ordination department told Business Recorder that with implementation of abolishment of project allowances, his department would receive transfer files of those regular officers who are working in various projects only to get hefty allowances. He appreciated this decision of provincial government and said that if it would be implemented with letter and sprit, the millions of rupees of provincial exchequer would be saved.