November 9, 2001	Friday	Shaba’an 22, 1422

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SWABI, Nov 8: Women councillors of tehsil Swabi staged a walkout from a council session here as a mark of protest against non-allocation of development funds for uplift projects in their respective union councils.

Albeit a strange occurrence in the local setting, the female councillors made it clear that their presence and representation will have to be given due weight and the past practice of pushing their demands under the carpet and ignoring their voice will have to be ceased.

The walkout was precipitated by the council convener’s inattention to their demands for allocation of discretionary funds to carry out welfare schemes in the current financial year.

The annoyed councillors were later convinced to end their boycott of the council proceedings on assurances that their problems would be resolved on priority basis.

The tehsil Nazim Masood Jabar told the council that none of the councillors would be ignored and stressed the need for forging cooperation and launching efforts in concert to come to grips with the public problems.

He pledged that the budget would be equally distributed among all the elected representatives and no one would be allowed to devour the public money set aside for development projects or let it go unused.

He announced allocating Rs100,000 for each female councillor, labour/peasant and minority members for being used in the uplift projects.

The council adopted a resolution castigating the religious parties for giving a call for a strike, and urging the people to keep themselves aloof from the strike.