The government has decided to abolish Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA), and restrained the organisation from initiating new projects or schemes. The ERRA was established in 2005 after a massive earthquake hit Azad Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of the country.
The government has constituted a special committee of the Cabinet Division to look into issues of ERRA and prepare proposals if the organisation could be abolished. An official letter available with Business Recorder discloses that the special committee has recommended the government to abolish the authority, as it is marred with corruption and mismanagement.
The committee has also rejected a proposal by the organisation to make it an autonomous body; so that it could initiate projects in the earthquake-hit areas on its own. "The ERRA has been directed to complete all its projects with the available funding before December 2015," an official said, adding the government has also imposed a ban on the authority for launching any new project.
He said that around five billion rupees are available with the authority and it can easily complete all its under construction projects. "If any project or scheme is not completed before December 2015 that would be transferred to AJK or KP government," he said. The official said that National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) would undertake all future projects in the earthquake-hit areas with the help of the AJK and KP governments.
The government will have to get a resolution passed from both houses of the parliament to abolish the ERRA as it is mandatory to do as per the ERRA act. In a meeting of the special committee of the Cabinet Division, Chief Secretary Sindh also raised serious objections over performance of the authority. The secretary said that the authority did a good job in the beginning but now it has turned into a white elephant. The chief secretary requested the federal government to hand over all pending projects to Azad Kashmir government with the needed funds; so that they could be completed in time. Chief Secretary Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also raised questions over performance of the ERRA and recommended to abolish it by December 2015. The committee directed officials of the ERRA to prepare a detailed report on all its ongoing projects in Azad Kashmir and KP and submit the list. The committee, however, decided to retain all employees of the ERRA and transfer them to MS Wing of the Establishment Division.
"A special wing will be created in the NDMA and all the ERRA employees will be deployed there," the official said. The committee also directed the ERRA officials to convene a meeting of its council and give consent to abolish the authority under Article 26 of the ERRA Act.
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