HYDERABAD, Dec 9: The Nazim city, Hyderabad Taluka, Haji Moinuddin Shaikh on Saturday presented the first revised deficit budget of the city taluka for the year 2001-2002 at the Jinnah Hall.

The convener and Naib Nazim, Abdul Qadeer Naghar, presided over the meeting of the city council.

The budget envisages an income of Rs179,407,177 while the expenditure is estimated at Rs196,752,072. The deficit comes to Rs17,344,895.

In his budget speech, the city Nazim said that the deficit was due to the fact that the government had increased the salaries of the employees with effect from Dec 2001, while the other reason was that the city taluka would have to pay the bulk of arrears of the defunct Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.

He said the total of these arrears came to Rs108,706,072.

He said that the council was not at all in a position to pay these arrears, therefore the government had been requested to give a special grant of Rs100 million to overcome the deficit.

He said efforts would also be made to recover taxes, fees and the Municipal properties rent. An amount of Rs14,500,000 has been earmarked for development works including the construction, repairs and maintenance of roads, streets, nullahs, drains, parks, municipal buildings as well as employees quarters.

Giving details regarding the development programme, Mr Shaikh said that an amount of Rs9,825,000 would be spent on the construction and repairs of roads and streets, Rs3,050,000 on the construction and repair of nullahs and drains, Rs1,600,000 on the repairs of the municipal building and employees quarters, and Rs800,000 on other works.

He said development expenditure would be distributed among all the union councils to the extent of Rs500,000 each. The percentage of the development expenditure comes to 8.87 per cent of the budget. The salaries and allowances of the employees will account for Rs67,455,000 whereas Rs1 million will be spent on purchasing employees uniforms. Some money has also been allocated under the heads of scholarship for employees’ children; purchase of sports goods, welfare work, etc.

In his budget speech, the city Nazim invited the attention of the councillors to the chronic problem of sewerage disposal which had attained alarming proportions.

He said the HDA gutters were overflowing as a result of which the properties of citizens as well as roads were being damaged.

He said the area of Al-Rahim Shopping Centre, Azeemushan Cloth Market, Pinjra Pul, Station Road and Haider Chowk had become inaccessible due to sewage accumulating there.

The city Nazim said that due to the wrong planning of the HDA, the sewerage system had been completely destroyed.

He said in order to absolve itself of its own responsibility, the HDA had transferred the staff responsible for the disposal of underground sewerage to the city taluka. However, he added that the staff had been returned to the HDA.

He said that in order to improve the sewerage system, the Sindh Government had given Rs500 million to the HDA.

He said that since the HDA had totally failed in maintaining the sewerage system, therefore, the amount should be given to the city council which would install a network of sewerage disposal to save the properties of the citizens.

He called upon the councillors to help recover the taxes, fees and rents.

He held out a promise that the income of the respective union council would be spent on the construction and repairing of streets, drains and other works.

CLEANLINESS DRIVE: Hyderabad Naib Nazim Nawab Rashid Ali Khan has stressed upon the Hyderabad District Council, the citizens and NGOs to undertake joint efforts to make Hyderabad a clean city.