HYDERABAD, June 27: It was proposed in Friday’s Hyderabad District Council session that discretionary funds of the DCO and emergency funds kept at his disposal in the budget 2003-4 should be withdrawn and discretionary funds of the district Nazim should be subject to the approval by the council.

Continuing debate on the district government budget and referring to the allocation of Rs175 million for the district Nazim secretariat against last year allocation of Rs1.3 million, Rana Mehmood Ali Khan said that discretionary funds and grants of the district Nazim should be made subject to approval by the district council.

Similarly, He proposed said that the discretionary funds of the DCO should be withdrawn and allocated for emergency needs.

About discretionary grant of Rs4 million of the district Naib Nazim, he said that half of it should be spent on holding seminars and other programmes and with the rest of amount, a conference hall should be constructed in the district council building.

He said that the biggest negative aspect of budget was that its non-development component, amounting to 75 per cent of the total allocations, overshadowed its development component.

Saying that of the thrust of the allocations for health was also on non-development side, he argued that only Rs5.9 million was earmarked for a taluka hospital out of the Rs85.7 million health budget.

He said that education was the main component of the budget, having an allocation of Rs2.17 billion, but the amount was likely to be misused given the fact that teachers appointed on political basis did no attend schools but drew salaries whereas ghost schools also continued to haunt the education department. Calling for forming vigilance committees, he said that measures should be taken to check attendance of school teachers.

Seeking enhancement in allowances of district council members from Rs3.6 million to Rs5 million, he said that each of its member should also be given an honorarium of Rs5,000 in the light of section 113 of the Sindh Local Government Ordinance (SLGO).

He also proposed an increase in rent of properties of the district council to raise income of the district government.

He said that instead of allocating Rs3 million for women’s welfare they should be given Rs100 million and out of the amount, Rs2.5 million each should be utilised by women in four tehsils followed by expenditure of same amount for the same purpose in the rest of the four tehsils next year..

He proposed that Rs2 million should be given to each union council and funds of on-going schemes and new schemes should be merged .

Participating in the debate, Mohammad Khan Zaur deplored that union councils were not directly allocated funds on the pattern of other districts and demanded that funds should be equally distributed among 102 union councils.

District Naib Nazim Nawab Rashid Ali Khan said that members of the district council were free to make any amendments to budget which would not be adopted unless it was approved by the council.

He invited the members to offer suggestions for the budget estimates which would be sent to the Sindh government for approval and if changes were made by the government, it was bound to send them back to the council for scrutiny by members.

Finance and Planning EDO Sikandar Ali Shah assured the members that funds of the defunct district council would be utilised for development schemes of the district government.