July 12, 2002	Friday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1, 1423

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ISLAMABAD, July 11: The Capital Development Authority (CDA) has failed to utilize total funds of Rs2.377 billion allocated for uplift projects last year under its Annual Development Programme (AWP) 2001-2002, a source in the CDA’s finance wing told Dawn on Thursday.

The source said the CDA’s performance regarding development works remained unsatisfactory as the uplift works undertaken by the authority were not up to the mark.

He said the authority spent less than 70 per cent of the allocated funds on the uplift programmes as a result of which a number of projects could not be executed.

The CDA, under its AWP 2001-2002, had allocated a total of Rs2.377 billion for development works, out of which Rs1.080 billion had to be utilized on development projects under the grant released by the government. However, a sum of Rs809 million was spent on the projects. Similarly, CDA had to spent an amount of Rs1.297 billion from its own resources on various programmes. But, Rs710 million was spent under self financing projects.

According to the evaluation carried out by the CDA, only one-third of the total amount allocated for the AWP 2001-2002 could be utilized in the last fiscal year.

Those projects which could not be launched under AWP 2001- 2002 would be commissioned in the fiscal year 2002-2003 as carried out works. As a result of carried out works, the amount of AWP 2002-2003 has been increased in the CDA’s annual budget.

“Of the total annual budget 2002-2003 of Rs5 billion, an amount of Rs2 billion would be spent on non-development expenditure, including salaries of the employees, furniture, POL, etc, whereas Rs3 billion would be utilized for uplift schemes,” the source added.

A senior CDA official said it was incompetency on the part of the authority’s engineering wing that the total allocated amount of AWP 2001-2002 could not be utilized for the approved development schemes. However, the engineering wing always complains that it has not been given sufficient money to meet the expenditure on uplift projects.

“Last year, the engineering wing was given the required money for development works, but the officials of the wing were warned that any deficiency in development work would not be tolerated,” the official added.

In view of strict directives, the officials of the engineering wing became conscious thus the pace of development work slowed in the last fiscal year.