GIVING QUETTA A DECENT LOOK

For decades, Quetta remained ignored capital of this Province as the officials normally paid no heed to its needs, mainly on its basic infrastructure. This can be proved that there was a park in central Quetta where the officials, all aliens, allowed construction of dozens of concrete building eliminating the only breathing space of this provincial capital. It was the level of interests of the officials who ruled Quetta. Seldom local officials were posted in Quetta. All DMG and CSS officials were brought and given sensitive posting and the locals were never trusted. The second element was that they encouraged and patronized the corrupt to pilfer the public money so that Quetta is denied a decent infrastructure right from the very outset. The corrupt elements were responsible for constant overflow of gutters, heaps of garbage everywhere, polluted water for human consumption and no replacement of rusty pipeline laid almost a century ago. No plan was prepared to provide drinking water to the entire population and without any discrimination. The fund provided for development of surface dam to boost portable water supply were embezzled by officials from the Federal Government. One official of Haj scandal fame was responsible for embezzling more than 34 billion of WASA destroying the whole project in connivance with the scholarly ministers in the Cabinet. We hope that the Chief Secretary will effectively supervise the spending on infrastructure development in Quetta ensuring quality construction and disallow any pilferage of public money so that the benefits should go to the people—not to the ministers or the corrupt officials, engineers and contractors. The prime job is to stop the constant overflow of gutter and sewerage water on main roads, stop people dumping waste in the open drain line or storm water drains of Quetta and finally, quality of construction should be ensured while building all roads or overhead bridge or flyovers.