11 April 2004	Sunday	20 Safar 1425

PESHAWAR, April 10: A lack of coordination between the members of national and provincial assemblies and the local bodies' representatives is causing complications and wastage of public funds, according to official sources.

The sources said that involvement of senators, MNAs and MPAs in carrying out of uplift projects in addition to the district governments, town municipal administrations and union councils had resulted in duplication of works.

Development activities at the moment are being executed at a fast pace to ensure maximum utilization of funds during the last quarter of the current fiscal year.

Hundreds of small and medium size projects are being executed under the supervision of union councils, town municipal administrations, district governments, the provincial government, senators and MNAs.

The MPAs, MNAs and senators, who have been allocated substantial amounts of funds by the federal and provincial governments, have identified a large number of development schemes in their constituencies. A the same time, union councils, town municipal administrations and district governments have also been executing several projects.

The provincial government has allocated Rs5 million each to 124 MPAs under the Tameer-i-Sarhad programme.

The local bodies' representatives complained about the duplication of work.

"There is no system," said Saeed Butt, nazim of the union council Karimpura, while talking to this correspondent. He said that streets constructed in his union council some time ago had been re-built under the supervision of the local PPP MPA, Zahir Shah.

Mr Butt claimed that the MPA was executing development works without consulting the local authorities.

Similar views were expressed by Haroon Bilour, nazim of town-1 of the city district government, Peshawar. He cited many instances of overlapping of development activities caused by the lack of coordination. According to him, a female MNA from Peshawar objected to his town's move to construct the Hakim Abdul Jalil Road in the Bana Marri area.

"She intervened in the matter only after we had invited bids through newspaper advertisements from interested parties," Mr Bilour claimed.

Though the road was constructed by the town-1, it consumed too much time to settle the issue with the MNA, the sources said.

Mr Bilour suggested that the MNAs and MPAs should include a scheme in their work plan only after obtaining a no objection certificate from the district coordination officer who looks after all development works in a district. He said the MNAs and MPAs should coordinate with the district governments to ensure effective utilization of development works.