KARACHI, March 2: A Rs540 million budget of the city government’s five departments has been prepared after squeezing expenses from other departments.

The six-month proposed budget of Medical, Literacy, Information Technology, Investment Promotion, and Forest/Fisheries departments will be discussed and approved at a special session of the City Council scheduled to begin on Monday.

Sources said the amount being earmarked for these departments for six months had actually been deducted from the allocations made under different heads of the city government’s other departments and hence some developmental works, which were relatively of less importance, would definitely suffer.

Asked whether there was no other source of income for earmarking funds for the purpose rather than extracting funds from other departments, the sources said the Finance and Planning Department had prepared the proposed budgets of the departments without putting an additional financial burden on the city government, which had started facing financial crunch in its infancy.

The need for getting approved the budgets of some of the new departments had been necessitated as the city government had retained Medical Department while Investment Promotion, Information Technology, Literacy and Forest/Fisheries departments had been merged into it.

The defunct KMC, whose budget for the year 2001-2002 was being utilized for the city government’s various departments, had allocated funds for the Medical Department, but it was only for six-month period as at the time of approval of the defunct KMC’s budget it was not clear whether the Department would remain a part of the city government or would be handed over to the Sindh government.

The sources said the city government’s budgets of its medical and other new departments would be technically for six months, from January to June 2002, but since some of the amounts which had already been allocated for these departments during January and February, it would be reappropriated with the consent of the City Council.

The sources elaborated that a major share of the proposed Rs450 million budget would be reserved for the city government’s health allocation as a huge amount was required for purchasing medicines and necessary equipment for hospitals as well as for arranging salaries of medical and paramedical staff.