LAHORE, March 25: Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi ordered on Tuesday reconstruction of the provincial Planning and Development Board and approved the establishment of the Punjab Development Authority.

He also announced the establishment of the Punjab Development Forum and the Poverty Alleviation Commission.

The chief minister was presiding over a meeting during which he was briefed on the working of the Planning and Development Board. It was attended, among others, by chief secretary Hafeez Akhtar Randhawa, P&D chairman Humayun Farshori and finance secretary Salman Siddiq.

At present, the P&D has three official and four ex-officio members.

Sources told Dawn that under the new arrangement the board would comprise on five official and four ex-officio members.

The ex-officio members are chief economist, P&D secretary, Punjab Economic Research Institute director-general and Information Technology Board chairman.

They said the new official members would be given the portfolios of social policy, infrastructure, development, foreign aid and evaluation. They would be responsible for the monitoring of development projects and formulation of the economic policy of the province.

Member infrastructure will look after roads, bridges, buildings, water, power, water supply and sanitation, and member social policy education, health, social welfare and literacy.

Similarly, member development will handle food, livestock, fisheries, forestry, agriculture, cooperatives, industries and labour, member foreign aid foreign donor agencies, federal government and institutions, and foreign-funded projects, and member evaluation appraise major projects.

The Punjab Development Authority would plan and initiate mega development projects in major cities like Lahore, Gujranwala, Multan, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Sargodha.

These cities have their own development authorities which are now functioning under their respective district governments. The structure of the new authority would be announced shortly.

The Punjab Development Forum would include economic experts, researchers, scholars and planners from the private sector. They would assess feasibility, viability and impact of all major development projects in the province. The chief minister would be the chairman of the forum whose set up would also be announced shortly.

Mr Elahi made it clear that no delay in the approval of the development schemes would be tolerated. The P&D would be made an exemplary institution which would make research based economic planning, provide guidelines to all departments, formulate policy and development strategy.

He said delay in the approval of development schemes was like rendering a loss to the nation, directing all departments to keep in view local needs while making development projects.

The chief minister said a special package was being prepared for accelerating the pace of development in the southern Punjab and for alleviating poverty there.

He said the Punjab Resource Management Programme, Education Sector Reforms Programme, Punjab Municipal Development Fund Project, On-farm Water Management Programme and Lahore Infrastructure Improvement Project would soon be launched.

The chief minister directed the P&D authorities to regulate the foreign training programme so as to provide education and technical training to officers of all government departments.