PESHAWAR, March 10: Lack of consensus among members of the district mushavirat committees has been a major impediment in speedy utilization of development funds in most of the districts in the province.

Sources said that in several cases it had been found the committees lacked coordination among their members. The committees comprise the district nazims and naib nazims of the districts and all the tehsil and town nazims of the districts.

The members' strained relationship with the district councilors has also hampered fast execution of development schemes. The provincial government distributed over Rs444 million among the 24 district governments during the first six months of the current financial year.

Only Rs40 million could be utilized, about nine per cent of the amount released and four per cent of the Rs867 million earmarked for the districts for the financial year. The committees were formed for coordination between the district and tehsil or town administrations.

According to a document of the provincial government, the committees usually lacked coordination, causing delay in the preparation of the districts' annual development programmes. It said the approval of the ADPs' was delayed due to lack of consensus between the councilors and the committee.

Under the Local Governments Ordinance, the committees' functions were: to crystallize vision for integrated development of the district, to prioritize and coordinate inter-tehsil development plans, toresolve intra-district disputes, to muster resources for crisis management and to set direction for realizing economic potential of the district.

Sources said the committees been rendered ineffective in most of the cases because of wrangling among the members. Only 11 of the province's 24 districts had put their ADPs in place for the financial year by Dec 31 after getting them approved from the district councils.

The committees are required to meet at least once in every three months but in most of the cases they failed to meet within the specified time. There were districts, said the sources, where the district nazims were at war with some tehsil and town nazims.

A Peshawar union council nazim said the members of the mushavirat committee here remained at loggerheads for most of the year. "We hardly come to know about their meetings," he said.