LAHORE, Feb 3: The Decentralization Support Programme, Punjab chapter, has completed the training of 200 officers of 10 district governments and 17 tehsil municipal administrations in matters related to budget and planning and would train another 1,000 by the end of March.

Provincial programme coordinator Naved Saleh Siddiq gave out this while speaking at the opening ceremony of a four-day training workshop organized for the City District Government officials dealing with budget and planning here on Thursday.

He said that similar training workshops were being held at Rawalpindi and Multan as well. Mr Siddiq said that the decentralization support programme had started training of the budget and planning officials of 24 district governments, 105 TMAs in Punjab for increasing their professional skills.

The training module had been developed inhouse by a team of technical experts with input provided by an international consultant. Speaking on the occasion, district coordination officer Khalid Sultan said the training of the officials dealing with budget and planning had become necessary after the promulgation of new budget rules in the province.