PESHAWAR, June 23: Heated debate continued on Wednesday in the NWFP Assembly on the 2004-05 provincial budget. Dr Salim Khan of the Swabi Qaumi Mohaz, a district-level organization, said it was a balanced and development-oriented budget.
He said the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government had given equal share of development projects to the opposition lawmakers in the current budget. "Our entire province is poor. Majority of the population is living below the poverty line. The unemployment ratio is also higher than other provinces," he added.
Tehreek-i-Insaf MPA Mian Nisar Gul read out a long list of the chief minister's services for his constituency, PF-40, Karak. He said the government had completed 100 per cent of development schemes, initiated last year in his constituency.
Criticizing different aspects of the budget, Syed Mureed Kazim of the PPP-S said it was an ill-conceived budget. The backward and poor areas like Dera Ismail Khan, which needed an early assistance, had been neglected by the decision-makers on political considerations, he added.
He said that in Paharpur, girl students were constrained to attend classes at the boys college, because they had no degree college in the area. "We have time and again asked the government to do some thing in this regard, but to no avail," he added.
Mr Kazim said that MMA secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rehman and his brother, MNA Ataur Rehman, had also asked the government to provide relief to the poor people of backward areas of D.I. Khan, but the rulers were not ready to hear them.
Tahir bin Yamin from Tank had urged the government to streamline the ghost primary schools instead of setting up 20,000 adult literacy centres in the NWFP. He said out of 21,000 primary schools hundreds had become non-operative because of the negligence of the department concerned.
The government should run those schools properly and remove label of ghost schools from them, he added. The finance minister, he said, invited him on June 2 to submit some of the schemes on preferential order.
"I submitted three schemes, but none of them had been included in the ADP. I have seen schemes which I had not submitted, and moreover they had not been identified and evaluated properly," he added.
Qazi Mohammed Asad of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q said: "All the credit of the reforms goes to Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, who had initiated a Provincial Reforms Programme in 2001, which includes free distribution books to girl students up to the matric level." The government should be thankful to the governor, who had launched a five-year (2001-2006) programme for the province, he added.
