PESHAWAR, Jan 22: Low utilization of the funds allocated by international donor agencies for carrying out different projects in the health department has been hindering accomplishment of the objectives of the projects, sources said.

"The second quarter of the current financial year 2003-4 has shown an extremely poor utilization of funds on the five foreign-funded projects in the health sector of the NWFP," said the sources.

Sources in the health department revealed that the provincial health department had included five projects in the foreign-assisted component, to be carried out in the current fiscal year.

The projects were: the World Food Programme's (WFP's) Promoting Safe Motherhood Project (PSMP), the Asian Development Bank's (ADB's) Reproductive Health Project (RHP), World Bank's (WB's) Department For International Development (DFID), Canadian International Development Agency's (CIDA's) Enhanced HIV/AIDS Control Programme and EPI and ADB sponsored Women Health Project (WHP).

The details revealed that the WFP-sponsored project, PSMP, had been given approval on Dec 23, 2003, with a total allocation of Rs2.545million during the current fiscal year, and the entire amount had been released to the department concerned.

But the department, according to the statistics, had been unable to utilize a single penny so far. Similarly, Rs1 million had been allocated for ADB-funded RHP, which had also been released by the finance department, but zero utilization had been recorded so far.

Enhanced HIV/AIDS Control Project, another important programme, jointly funded by the World Bank, DFID and CIDA, for which Rs1.100 million had been allocated during the current fiscal, which had been released, but the department had yet to utilize the amount.

The Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), another important programme, sponsored by Bill Gates-funded Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunization (GAVI) for which Rs3.077 million had been allocated and released by the finance department, but the utilization remains zero. The WHP, an ADB funded project with an allocation of Rs680 million, but the total utilization of funds in this project is only Rs16 million.