September 19, 2007	Wednesday	Ramazan 06, 1428

PESHAWAR, Sept 18: Legislators in the Frontier Assembly, particularly women nominated on reserved seats, are unhappy with Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani for his alleged discriminatory attitude while releasing funds under the Tameer-i-Sarhad Programme (TSP).

A couple of MPAs from opposition benches complained that they had been deprived of funds approved by the house under the TSP, affecting their uplift schemes.

Awami National Party’s Farah Aqil Shah said that funds allocated under the 2006-07 financial year for her development projects had not been released resulting in delay in their execution.

“My schemes are lying incomplete and earning me a bad name as a parliamentarian because common person has no idea about such political rivalries and score settling by the chief minister,” she criticised.

She told Dawn that even in the 2007-08 financial year funds of Rs10 million allocated to every parliamentarian under the TSP were not released.

“Whenever I tried to contact the chief minister he turned down my request because he did not want to listen a single word on the issue,” she said.

The Tameer-i-Sarhad Programme is meant to provide equal amount of funds to all members of the provincial assembly to be spent on the development works in their constituencies.

In this connection an amount of Rs1,240 million was earmarked and schemes worth Rs10 million were to be submitted by each member of the provincial assembly for development work of his or her constituency.

PML MPA Simin Mehmood Jan has the same story to tell, saying funds were released to the opposition leader and parliamentary leaders of the political parties to oblige them while other MPAs could not attain their due right in this regard.

Some of the opposition members including Saeed Khan, Zar Gul Khan, Pir Mohammad and Ikramullah Shahid were also deprived of the funds under the TSP and taken the issue to the court.