LAKKI MARWAT: Lakki Marwat tehsil municipal administration is facing financial crunch as it is unable to pay salaries and pensions to its employees due to non-availability of funds, a source said on Wednesday.

He said that a huge sum of Rs23.3 million had alredy been spent on payment of salaries and pensions to employees and clearing dues of Wapda and local council board and payment of legal fee out of allocations in PLA account for tehsil annual developmental programme.

He said a major chunk of the amount of current ADP went to public health engineering department and Pesco for installation of tubewells, transformers and power pylons and arranging sports gala and soil conservation projects.

At present the municipal administration is not in a position to pay salaries and pensions because of having no money in its accounts, he revealed, saying that the serving and former employees were not paid salaries and pensions in the holy month of Ramazan.

He said the contractors were also pressing the municipal body hard for payment of their liabilities.

The source said that the municipal administration had already spent Rs89.971 million it had received from provincial finance department as first and second quarter installments for the current year’s annual developmental programme.

He said that tehsil finance officer had repeatedly advised municipal authorities to stop miscellaneous expenditures to avoid financial crisis, but to no avail.

“The tehsil finance officer has also asked the municipal officer to approach higher quarters concerned of the provincial government for the release of third and fourth quarter installments to overcome financial crunch and clear liabilities of contractors,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2019