By Sardar Khan Niazi
Development projects cost many times more than the government’s original estimate and take longer than the original deadline. Mega projects stumble at every step of the way, due to a hastily done feasibility study and poor action plan.
A country’s development is not possible through a waste of public money and resources. Actually, people should benefit from the development, in reality, that is not often the case.
What is unique about our country, however, is the difficulty in holding government officials accountable for their ill-conceived or ill-executed development projects designed only for the benefit of the influential or vested quarters.
Another strange aspect of development is politicians take credit for development as if they just take the resources needed for development out of their own pockets. The fact that almost all government projects are funded with taxpayers’ money or through loans, which the taxpayers have to repay tends to get lost in the political rhetoric.
Since public money funds all the development, the only way to ensure that these projects serve the people of the country is by holding government officials accountable. It is because of the absence of such accountability that our development projects often go astray.
Officials spend a much higher amount on road construction because of time overruns and a lack of competitive bidding. Despite the allocation of billions of rupees, quality roads are hardly built in the country due to a lack of proper monitoring by the relevant authorities, and because construction firms are rarely held accountable for time and cost overruns.
Most construction firms, having political influence, rarely ensure quality road construction due to a lack of proper monitoring by the authorities concerned. Government engineers, who must be present to ensure quality during construction work, remain absent in most cases.
The feasibility study conducted before the project’s approval is done poorly. As a result, when consultants prepare the detailed design, they have to bring significant changes to the initial plan, resulting in cost escalation. Nobody is held responsible for this mess-up.
No one carries out annual audits of expenses, which is mandatory for fund release for the project work. There remain methodological flaws in the work, as the infrastructural work of the project starts before the fixation of the sewage problem.
There are countless other such examples, where time and cost overruns have become a severe headache. Incompetence is not the main issue. Corruption is the biggest problem.
Officials systematically siphon off crores of public money from development projects. It is not often that we see such syndicates and influential people get exposed for their corrupt activities. Moreover, even when they are, rarely do we see any administrative action taken against them.
Moreover, the one who is exposed or punished is frequently the small fish in comparison. This means that the more powerful individuals or groups who are responsible for numerous development projects going to waste can continue with their crooked ways.
Unfortunately, there is also a serious lack of vision among the government leadership, which is allowing for such shortsighted looting of the country’s valuable resources that could have been used more efficiently for faster development.
That is where the role of media becomes valuable. Perhaps with better exposure of the corrupt practices leading to our development projects going awry, and with sustained public pressure, many of them can be brought back on track.
The only way for this to change is through action by honest and courageous individuals. Relying on public officials to deliver on development projects is a recipe for disaster. That is why it is so important to put in place a system to hold public officials accountable for misusing funds.
