KARACHI: The World Bank has suspended a $200 million project in Pakistan’s southwest, a spokeswoman said on Sunday, jeopardizing development work in one of the poorest and least developed provinces in the country. The water resource project, in Balochistan province, was due to be completed by October 2022.
But the bank has highlighted numerous problems with the project, including financial management and a lack of progress.
“For the time being, the project has been suspended for 30 days,” Mariam Altaf, a spokeswoman for the World Bank, told Arab News.
The Balochistan Integrated Water Resource Management and Development Project was signed three years ago and the bank committed to cover $200 million of the estimated $209.70 million cost.
“Unfortunately, there has since then been a lack of progress in managing the project, disbursing funds, proceeding with the civil works, and fiduciary control,” the bank said in a statement.
“The World Bank has suspended the project and offered to work with the government of Balochistan over the next 30 days to restructure the scope and governance arrangements to more realistically begin to deliver sustainable water management to the province.”
Balochistan has some of the worst health indicators in the country.
About 62 percent of its population does not have access to safe drinking water and more than 58 percent of its land, which makes up 44 percent of Pakistan’s total land mass, cannot be cultivated because of water shortages.
The project was designed to strengthen “provincial government capacity” for water resources monitoring and management and to “improve community-based water management” for targeted irrigation schemes in the province.
Azim Kakar, the spokesman for the chief minister, and Sajjad Ahmed Bhutta, additional chief secretary for planning and development, declined to comment on the suspension.
Adnan Aamir, a Quetta-based development expert, said provincial bureaucracy was to blame.
“The way government machinery operates is flawed and obsolete and can’t cope with modern day governance requirements,” he told Arab News.
“The suspension of this project will badly affect agriculture in the Nari and Porali river basin areas.”
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