No issue if Centre wants to take over Sindh projects, but credit must be given: Ghani

The Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) — a much-awaited project that has long been touted as the cure for Karachi's public transport issues — has not been launched so far because the federal government had another railways project — the ML-1 — higher up in its priority list, according to Sindh provincial minister Saeed Ghani. 

Speaking on Geo News programme ‘Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Sath’ on Wednesday, the minister said: “The KCR project exists merely on paper as the Centre never pursued it.” 

He explained that the provincial government had not been able to do anything in this regard unilaterally. 

“The provincial government is not authorised to conduct the CPEC dialogue with the Chinese government, as these [dialogues] are held at the federal level,” he said.

However, he said he hoped there would now be progress on the project as the Karachi Transformation Plan recently hammered out between the federation and the Sindh government "has ironed out all irritants in this regard".

The Sindh government, he said, has no objection if the Centre wants to execute the KCR project, but it wants the Centre to accept that KCR was a Sindh government project.

Ghani also appreciated the Karachi Transformation Plan (KTP) announced by Prime Minister Imran Khan last week for its "better-defined mechanism" for development projects. 

He said the dispute over the K-IV, S3 and KCR projects was not being resolved previously. "Now, the situation is headed toward improvement," he said.

According to a statement issued by the Sindh government yesterday, the revival of Karachi Circular Railway is a flagship project of the Sindh government, included in the CPEC framework on December 29, 2016 during the 6th Joint Coordination Committee meeting held in Beijing at the request of Chief Minister, Sindh.

The PC-I of KCR was approved by ECNEC on October 6, 2017 at a total cost of $1.97 billion, the statement said. Moreover, the Transport and Mass Transit Department of the Government of Sindh was supposed to be the sponsoring and executing agency for the project, it said.

Saeed Ghani also held Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar responsible for the tension between the province and the Centre over the last couple of days, saying that an issue would not have been created over the exact contribution of the federation and the province in the KTP had the federal minister not addressed a press conference on the matter.

Umar asks Sindh to avoid political point-scoring 

Umar, addressing a press conference a day earlier, had expressed disappointment over a debate going on for the previous four days about who was contributing more to the Karachi uplift projects. 

Umar had reiterated that the PPP should avoid political point-scoring on the matter and focus on the groundwork for the projects instead.

The minister had said the people of Karachi were least bothered about who was contributing what and only wanted work on the ground. 

"The people of Karachi will hurl shoes at both the PPP and PTI if they continue doing press conferences against each other instead of initiating practical work," he had warned.

Referring to a press conference hosted by PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the minister said that if the provincial government wanted to claim that it was contributing Rs750 billion from the Rs1,100 billion demarcated for the Karachi Transformation Plan, the Centre was not much bothered.

But, he alleged, the PPP did not have the will to initiate work for the development of the city. 

“If you do not have the will to work, it will not get done through just press conferences.”

The minister said, “Work from our side has already started as I called a meeting immediately after the agreement in which a week-long deadline was set to start implementing the Plan.”

He said today he wrote a letter to Sindh chief minister for handing over the Greater Karachi Water Supply Project (K-IV) to the Centre as per the desire of the Sindh government. 

To a question, the minister had said that the K-IV, Karachi Circular Railways (KCR), Green Line and S3 were old projects but groundwork on the projects never started.