May 26, 2007	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 09, 1428

PESHAWAR, May 25: The NWFP government is considering appointing a separate project director for each mega-project so that they are completed on time in the next financial year 2007-08.

A proposal to this effect was reviewed recently at a high-level meeting chaired by NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani, an official of the Planning and Development Department told Dawn here on Friday.

The official said the chief minister in principle agreed to the proposal, which, if implemented, would pave the way for appointing a separate director for each project worth more than Rs100 million.

The government is also looking at the possibility of providing additional staff, mostly engineers and sub-engineers, for effective monitoring of development projects costing below Rs100 million.

The recruitment cost of the additional staff will be added to the PC-1s of each development projects of the same categories, the official said.

The provincial government is facing a lot of difficulties in achieving development targets mainly because of lack of capacity of the executing agencies and shortage of technical people at the local level.

Executing agencies, the official explained, every year could not spent 40 to 45 per cent of the fund earmarked for uplift projects that affect overall efforts amid poverty reduction.

According to him, as a result of such lack of capacity of development agencies, the government makes re-appropriations of development funds at the end of every financial year by diverting funds from inactive projects to those, where spending is comparatively good.

“Such re-appropriation of funds although improve the overall utilisation ratio; it is a violation of financial rules, which discourages this practice,” the official explained.