November 12, 2002	Tuesday	Ramazan 6, 1423

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RAWALPINDI, Nov 11: The district council on Monday refused to grant the authority of reappropriating the district budget to the district coordination officer (DCO) and Nazim.

The DCO, through a resolution moved before the house, had requested the council to grant authority to his office to reappropriate the budget upto a maximum of Rs1 million, and to that of district Nazim beyond Rs1 million.

He said the authorization was required for running the day to day business of the district government.

Member district council Col Naseer (retired), while opposing the motion, said reappropriating the district budget was the sole purview of the district council, which could not be taken back. All required reappropriations should be produced in the council session for approval, he maintained.

The council was informed that through another resolution passed some time ago, the authority to reappropriate funds in emergency cases was given to the district Naib Nazim.

Therefore, members believed that instead of seeking authority to reappropriate funds by the district government, the office of Naib Nazim should be involved. Such authorizations, too, would be subject to ratification by the council, they added.

Through another resolution forwarded by Chaudhry Ijaz, the council asked the provincial government to release the frozen funds of the district council so that the liabilities could be settled and the on-going projects be completed.

Mr Ijaz told the council that the Punjab government had frozen district council’s Rs140 million funds lying in treasury and bank accounts for the purpose of audit. The funds, he said, had been frozen for a fortnight, but by now several months had passed.

He said the Punjab government had given special instructions to the finance department to complete the audit at the earliest so that the routine business of the district government was not affected.

Mr Ijaz said the matter had been repeatedly taken up with the provincial government, but to no avail. As a result, work on 660 projects stopped.

He said it seemed to be a paradox that the district council had the authority to make allocations from the provincial fund provided to the district, but it could not spend the amount which was purely from the district’s own revenues.

The district council also endorsed 27,020 posts of the district administration. These posts had previously been sanctioned by the council at the time of approval of the supplementary budget, but the Punjab government had asked for re- validation of these posts.

It has been learnt that due to certain ambiguity in the approval of the posts, the payment of salaries had become a headache for the bureaucracy. The whole system had to be transferred from the computerized system to manual method because of the discrepancy.

The council constituted a seven-member committee to coordinate with the district government departments regarding the implementation of the resolutions passed by the house. The two members from Rawalpindi Tehsil are yet to be nominated, while other members are Maj Lehtasab Satti (retired), Kotli Sattian; Ch Abdul Ghaffar, Kahuta; Raja Irshad Abbassi, Murree; Farrukh Mughal, Taxila; and Chaudhry Azim, Gujar Khan.

Regarding the reservations of members about the education department, District Naib Nazim Raja Javed Ikhlas said the district government had recommended three officers to the Punjab government for replacing the current executive district officer (education).

The session was later prorogued for an unspecified period.