17 July 2004	Saturday	28 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

MUZAFFARABAD, July 16: The AJK government has directed secretaries and heads of public departments not to present any development scheme (local or foreign-funded) for approval before the development working party or the cabinet development committee without obtaining prior sanction t o include the scheme in the annual development programme.

According to a government document, officials have also been asked to seek policy guidelines about nature and terms of foreign assistance, terms of repayment, cost-sharing (among donor agency, government and community) before negotiating with the donor agency.

The document containing directions of Prime Minister Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan with regard to the foreign-aided projects has been circulated among 44 officials by premier's secretary Muhammad Akram Sohail.

In view of budgetary constraints, the officials have been asked to keep the AJK government's share in foreign-aided projects to the bare minimum, not exceeding more than 20 per cent of the total project cost.

The officials should finalize the identification of sectors and their respective size and allocation with the approval of the government. The duplication of activities in different ongoing projects should be kept to the minimum as it would lower the overhead charges and consequently the unit cost of various uplift activities.

The officials have also been directed to avoid establishment of parallel organizations and instead assign the development work to existing departments besides optimally availing the services of the line departments for the execution of schemes.

Additional requirement of personnel and logistic support should be kept to the bare minimum, besides making every effort to utilize the existing staff. New staff position should only be proposed if indispensable and in that case the project posts should be filled through contract appointments purely on temporary basis.

The staff adjusted against project posts through transfer may retain their lien in the parent department, it says. However no promotion should be allowed against project posts for its being violative of the law.