PESHAWAR, Feb 1: District governments in the NWFP want the provincial government to increase their non-salary budget and transfer the salary component of their budgets to them during the second year of operation of the provincial finance commission award.

At two workshops arranged recently by the authorities, they called for transferring the salary budget from the province to district governments and sought more funds for their recurring expenditure, sources said.

The exercise was meant to get feedback from the district governments on the functioning and impact of the resource distribution system envisaged under the PFC award, applicable from July 1, 2002, for an interim period of one year.

The district governments have complained against the budgetary allocations made for them to meet their recurring expenditure, describing them as insufficient.

Similarly, guidelines set for them to use a major chunk of their development funds on social sector have also been objected to by the district governments.

Besides, the provincial government’s move to keep the salary component of district governments’ budget with it — at least for one more year — has also been opposed by the district governments.

Of the Rs15.2bn earmarked for the 24 district governments in accordance with the resource distribution formula devised under the PFC award, only Rs1.1bn would be distributed among the district governments to meet their recurring expenditures and Rs867m for the provincially-funded development schemes.

In addition to this, a sum of Rs912m would be distributed among the district governments as grant in lieu of octroi and zila tax — abolished by the Nawaz Sharif government.

“We have no funds to keep the vehicles of the field staff running due to non-availability of funds to meet our POL requirements,” said Shahzada Mohiuddin, Nazim of Chitral district.

Officials and political leaders running the local governments in a couple of other remote districts of the province also made similar complaints.

Sources in the provincial government said the decision to keep the salary component with the province had been taken to avoid complications that might have cropped in assigning this important subject to the district governments.

The provincial government is to directly distribute Rs12.3bn among the district governments’ employees out of the total Rs17.9bn the province is to spend to meet its wage bill requirements during the 2002-03 financial year.

“Unless the district governments’ finance managers acquaint themselves with the procedures and properly know the things, they would not be able to handle this subject because it is not that simple,” said a senior officer of the provincial government.

About complaints of insufficient allocation, he said the districts, which were likely to be at a disadvantage, had been earmarked additional funds to overcome the shortages.