Skilled youth of Clean Development Cell without salaries for four months, planning to head back to foreign countries

Skilled youth of Clean Development Cell without salaries for four months, planning to head back to foreign countries

The “Clean Development Cell (CDM)”, formerly an energy development and conservation wing of the now devolved Ministry of Environment, is now lurking in shadows, as its fate hang in doldrums.

The Cell was created in the times of Pervez Musharraf to formulize and adopt strategies to develop means of conserving energy and to eradicate leakages and spillovers in the existing system of fuel transportation in the country.

CDM is equipped with highly educated researchers and PhD’s of foreign universities who decided to return to their homeland to contribute their due share in the betterment of society. Most of the staff at CDM has not been paid for the last four months and
the cell is not sure where it belongs.

The Cell was formerly attached to the Planning and Development Commission after the Ministry of Environment was devolved following the directives of the 18^th amendment. Earlier, the cell was given to Enercon in 2005 which follows the United Nations
Framework Conference on Climate Change UNFCCC protocol and has done remarkably well in the last four years, until the Planning and Development Commission took charge.

In late October 2011 of the high-powered committee under the chairmanship of Syed Khurshid Ahmad Shah clearly state: “It is decided that the work relating to CDM should again vest with Enercon.”

In January 2012, the Planning Division “approved the transfer of the project, Clean Development Mechanism, along with allocation of Rs14.6 million to Ministry of Water and Power under directions of the high-powered committee”.

However, three days later in another letter the division “withdrew the transfer of the CDM project until further notice.”

The cell holds one of the most lucrative budgets which it requires to pursue expensive research work, has been the major bone of contention between the competing ministries as they seek to overpower the cell for its whooping budget.

A senior official from the devolved ministry described the cell as a golden hen that everybody was eyeing and the confusion as “governance collapse.”

“Now they have woken up and realized the cell’s huge potential and everybody is pouncing at it,” he said,

For the moment, the highly skilled and educated youth of the country, associated with the cell are weighing their options to head back to foreign land where they might be able to earn a decent living.

“We do not know how long it will take to settle the issue especially now that the newly-formed Ministry of Disaster Management is also fighting for control of the cell,” said a CDM employee who has also not been paid the salary for the last four months.

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Posted by Naveed A Bari on Jan 30 2012. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry