PESHAWAR, June 26: The NWFP Assembly has unanimously approved the annual budget for the 2003-4 financial year on Thursday.

The opposition lawmakers, who tabled 55 cut motions on demands for grants and withdrew them, pointed out discrepancies in the allocations for certain departments and flayed their performance.

During a three-day discussion on demands for grants, they urged the government to revamp the old rules set during the British colonial era and form new regulatory authorities for health and education departments.

Abdul Akbar Khan, Hamid Iqbal, Tariq Khattak, Syed Zahir Shah, Iftikhar Khan Jhagra (PPP); Bashir Ahmed Bilour, Qalb-i- Hassan, Amir Rehman, Mukhtiar Khan, Shaukat Habib, Atiqur Rehman (ANP); Makhdoom Murid Kazim, Rifat Akbar Swati, Nasrin Khattak, Sikandar Sherpao, Israrullah Gandapur, Jamshed Khan, Arshad Khan (PPP-S); Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani, Nighat Orakzai, Qazi Mohammad Asad, Zar Gul Khan (PML-Q) and Pir Mohammad Khan (MMA) tabled their cut motions in the House.

They urged the government to take effective measures for the betterment of police, irrigation, works and services, health, education, mineral development, agriculture, revenue, forest and social welfare departments.

They also urged the government to allocate maximum development funds for the MPAs’ schemes rather than allocating 60 per cent to the district governments.

Speaker Bakht Jahan Khan, who presided over the session, many a times rescued the treasury benches from the opposition MPAs, who exploited the dependence of ministers on bureaucracy in budget making exercise. The finance minister made a superb use of his eloquence, when he was taken on by the old parliamentarians.

Finance Minister Sirajul Haq thanked the opposition lawmakers for extending a helping hand to the NWFP government on political and financial issues taken up with the Centre.

He hoped that the opposition parties would also foil the hidden conspiracies aimed at destabilising the democratic process in the province.

The NWFP government’s attitude with the opposition was better than the Punjab and Sindh governments. Likewise, NWFP opposition had a constructive role in the House, he added.

“This House is like a grand Jirga wherein everybody is enjoying equal rights. We are one in pursuance of our people’s rights,” he added.

Referring to the budget, he said it was enveloped in huge books and was a formal exercise which every government was bound to repeat, but “our actual budget will get a shape when problems of the remote areas and poor people will be solved”.

He said people needed safe drinking water, roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, shelter, protection of life and property and employment. It was the collective duty of the House to work for the solution of pressing problems, he added.

The House also adopted North-West Frontier Province Finance (Stamp Act Amendment) Act, 2003, which would come into force from July 1, 2003.

The Bill was introduced by the finance minister on June 16 in the House.