KARACHI: Overspendings in non-development sector criticized
By Our Reporter
KARACHI, June 13: The Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians, Sindh chapter, on Tuesday voiced serious apprehensions about the upcoming budget for fiscal 2006-07 and claimed that in the outgoing financial year the government failed in providing relief to the people and implementing schemes.
This was stated by PPP-P spokesperson on finance in the province, Ms Shazia Marri at a press conference. Leader of Opposition Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, Deputy Leader Murad Ali Shah, MPAs Syed Irfan Ali Shah, Nasreen Chandio, Rafiq Engineer, Saira Shahliani and Anwar Mahar were also present on the occasion.
Shazia Marri expressed disgust at the presentation of yet another budget in the absence of a new NFC Award. She said that the eyewash attempted by this government in the form of NFC Order had not fooled the people who were well aware of the government’s contorted and self-serving agenda.
Even with the much trumpeted unconstitutional NFC amendment, Sindh is getting 18 per cent less than what it would have got if Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Award was in effect, and an alarming 72 per cent less than what the people of Sindh wanted through the unanimous resolution passed by the Sindh Assembly in 2003, she claimed.
The Sindh government has indulged in excessive non-developmental expenditure. Departments have been guilty of unwarranted over spending in areas of non-development expenditure.
About some major departments within the government, Ms Marri gave details to highlight their poor performance in terms of development expenditure during the 10 months (July 2005 to April 2006).
Assuming that all departments intend to spend the entire allocated amount by the end of year, it would be safe to conclude that at the end of 10 months they would have spent approximately 83.33 per cent of the allocation.
Unfortunately, she added, no department did that. They managed to spend as little as 5.8 per cent of the allocation (Labour and Industries).
“One can only imagine where the rest of the unspent funds go, when there did not exist any record of spending for the remaining two months,” she said.
In education department, there was an increased spending of over 600 per cent of the original allocation for the current expenditure, while in developmental expenditure, the department failed to utilize even 50 per cent of its allocated funds, she said.
She said, “It is alarming to see such an increase in the non-developmental expenditure when there have been no jobs provided and no improvement seen in the education system. Add to this the deteriorating public education system, the non-availability of textbooks, and the lack of teachers and basic infrastructure for schools, and one is at a loss to attempt to understand this unprecedented increase in the non-developmental side of the budget.”
The women development department is a particular disappointment in terms of expenditure on development schemes, as it has shown to have used merely 14.1 per cent of its Rs30 million allocated fund, which was 0.125 per cent of the entire development budget of Rs24 billion.
Ms Marri emphasised that development of women was essential to the development of the nation, and it was impossible for women to develop in an environment where women are given just 0.125 per cent of the development budget. She alleged that the government which professed to be enlightened spent 0.018 per cent of its development budget on women.
She said that it was necessary that all information pertaining to the budget, including allocation and expenditure, must be made public since people had a right to know where and how their money was spent. However, as things stand today, even public representatives face great difficulty in obtaining this information.
After the worst federal budget in Pakistan’s history, there is no hope for relief from the Sindh Budget 2006-07. Far from being people friendly, the budgets presented by this government seemed to particularly target the poor and offer no solace to the masses.
In an attempt to make the Sindh budget pro-people, the PPPP had always sent pre-budget recommendations gleaned from public forums to the government. But, the government had not taken advantage of the recommendations to date, she added.
Shazia Marri said that the budgets presented by this government were successive failures due to the absence of a true democratic setup. “A budget that is made without public involvement in the system can have no hope of success,” she remarked.
Nisar Khuhro also criticised the government for misusing public money and allegedly deceiving the people by giving them fudged statistics. He also disputed regime’s claims on development work and alleged that it was seriously undermining unity and integrity of the country.
