November 2, 2002	Saturday	Sha’aban 26,1423

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

MUZAFFARABAD, Nov 1: The Azad Jammu Kashmir cabinet, here on Friday, constituted a 6-member ministerial committee to look into the affairs of the development authorities and submit recommendations to improve their working.

The AJK minister for finance and rehabilitation, Shah Ghulam Qadir, told newsmen after the meeting that the decision was taken by the cabinet in the light of growing complaints about the performance of these bodies, set up in five of the seven AJK districts.

The committee is headed by the communications, works and housing minister, Syed Mumtaz Ali Gillani, and it includes the minister for local government, law and parliamentary affairs, Raja Nisar Ahmed Khan, minister for industries, Chaudhry Masood Khalid, minister for forests, Mufti Mansoorur Rehman, minister for finance and rehabilitation, Shah Ghulam Qadir, and the parliamentary secretary for local government, Mir Ali Akbar.

Mr Qadir alleged that during the tenure of the last government, there was no financial discipline in these bodies which spent the funds for development schemes on providing employment, which created a host of problems.

The committee would look into such problems and furnish recommendations.

The cabinet, Mr Qadir said, also reviewed the issue of those Kashmiri refugees who came to Azad Kashmir from the Indian held side, between 1984-88, and decided that such refugees would be issued cards but as far as the provision of the subsistence allowance was concerned, case to case assessment would be made, he said.

When the minister was asked that whether the refugees who arrived after 1989 and got appointments as gazetted officers would continue to get the monthly allowance of Rs750, he replied in the negative but said that their family members would get the allowance.

He said the govt would also announce a package for the internally displaced persons before Eid.