25 January 2004	Sunday	02 Zilhaj 1424

PESHAWAR, Jan 24: The planning and development department, NWFP, and its devolved setup at the district level are faced with difficulties resulting from lack of training of their staff.

The workforce placed under the district governments against the devolved setup of P&D department has been reported as not well versed with the planning and development affairs.

According to official sources, it has been reported by several district governments that the planning and development departments at their level are not being able to work effectively for lack of training and experienced staff.

"The district governments have reported that employees posted against the P&D positions are not familiar with the job of planning, designing and executing development works," said a senior government functionary.

The issue has also come under discussion at the provincial level. It is reported that the staff on such positions, in most of the cases, has been taken from the surplus pool or diverted from other departments at the time the devolution of power plan was introduced.

In some of the instances, the staff posted as EDO finance/planning on the basis of experience in the planning and development sector got transferred from the district setups either to foreign-funded projects or to the provincial secretariat at Peshawar so that they could be saved from being posted in far-flung areas of the province.

The provincial government experienced an embarrassing situation in front of the international donor agencies after it failed to ensure execution of development works at faster speed and a huge sum remained unspent at the close of the previous financial year.

In line with the last financial year, the government is once again experiencing a tough time at the hands of donor agencies due to slow execution of development works in the first half of the current fiscal year.

A district coordination officer of a remote district of the province, said an official source, at a recently held consultative workshop of district Nazims and DCOs, organized by the Essential Institutional Reforms Operationalization Programme, brought to the fore issues his district was confronted with due to inexperienced and junior staff posted against the P&D positions.

Similarly, these difficulties arising out of the inexperienced staff being posted at the devolved setup have been reported in some of the recently prepared official documents available with this correspondent.

The district staff is not well-versed with the preparation of Annual Development Programme/development works.

The desired improvement could not be ensured even after conducting training courses for capacity building of district-based employees, particularly those associated with the finance and planning setups.

The situation at the union council level, said the source, appeared to be much critical because affairs relating to planning and development were being handled by BPS-5 level employees there.

In line with the devolution of power system, secretary of the union council handles development related affairs in the area.

"The secretary is a BPS-5 employee and not qualified to properly handle development agenda at the union council level," an official document notes.

Likewise, at the provincial level, too, the P&D department has been reported to be lacking the capacity to perform efficiently due to shortage of staff.

The department experienced a major cut in its number of sanctioned posts under the last provincial government's restructuring drive meant to curtail the non-developmental expenditure of the province in the name of rightsizing its departments.

The P&D department, NWFP, got the number of sanctioned posts trimmed to 125 from the previous strength of 327 after several of the sectors were merged to establish five broad sectors.

"The functions being performed by the provincial P&D department has not experienced change but it experienced a major cut in its staff in the restructuring drive which put it under tremendous pressure," said an officer.

The provincial government's decision to include an all-time high number of development schemes in the current financial year's ADP, said the source, made things even worse for the P&D department.

Burdened by the workload a large ADP employees of the provincial government, senior representatives of the department had started complaining against the manner in which rightsizing was carried out in one of the most important departments of the province, said the sources.

"Actually, the senior officers of the department misled the then chief executive of the province - the provincial governor - who ordered a major reduction in the number of P&D department's sanctioned posts on the pretext that a large setup at the provincial level is not needed when you have the devolved setup at the district level," said an officer.