MUZAFFARABAD: Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Chaudhry Abdul Majeed has approved a proposal aimed at brining the employees dealing with collection and disbursement of Zakat on normal budget, it was learnt here on Thursday.

The summary was moved by the AJK Zakat Council chairman, Khawaja Tariq Saeed, sources told Dawn.

The Zakat Council comprises a chairman, 14 unofficial members, mostly from the clergy, and four official members, including secretary finance and accountant general.

It prepares, approves and monitors the disbursement of Zakat funds through the Zakat and Ushar Department and Zakat committees in a lunar year.

In 1979, the government raised a set-up for collection, disbursement and administration of Zakat Fund through a presidential ordinance which was converted into an Act of the Legislative Assembly in 1985.

PM Majeed approves summary moved by AJK Zakat Council

According to the Act, expenditures on Zakat Council, Zakat and Ushar Department (ZUD) and district and constituency level Zakat committees were to be borne by the government, whereas honorariums of the non-official council chairman and members, recurring expenses of the department staff and administrative expenditures of local committees were to be drawn from Zakat, but not exceeding 10 per cent of the total annual collection.

In the beginning, the government sanctioned only 88 posts in normal budget against which mostly fresh appointments were made, but some experienced officials were drawn from other departments on permanent or deputation basis.

However in the following year, successive governments kept on making more appointments in Zakat Collection and Disbursement-related bodies against Zakat fund instead of the normal budget.

At the moment, the number of employees drawing salaries from the Zakat fund is 547 including 26 gazetted officers who were claiming in all Rs146 million per annum in salaries.

Apart from that every year another Rs12 million were being spent on the salary plus honorarium of chairman and 14 members of the Zakat council and heads of 10 district and 30 constituency-level Zakat committees.

This, sources said, meant that the administrative expenditure had swelled to an unreasonable 39 per cent in the current lunar year, further shrinking the actual amount for disbursement among the needy.

According to sources, at the 139th Zakat Council session, it was pointed out that since the government had not fulfilled its responsibility under the relevant law regarding meeting the expenses on salaries of the staff, the administrative expenditures had skyrocketed to 39 per cent in the current lunar year.

The council agreed that the only way to scale down the administrative expenditures was to compel the government to bring the employees of the department under the normal budget and decided to provide an amount of Rs291.81 million to the government to help it provide salaries of the Zakat collection and disbursement related staff over the next two years.

Afterwards, the government should provide salaries from its own budget, a proposal which had elicited PM’s approval.

When contacted, Mr Saeed confirmed that PM Majeed had resolved this long-pending issue by giving approval to the council’s summary.

It would now be sent to the chief secretary’s office for issuance of a formal government notification, he said. Mr Saeed added that the council would withdraw this amount from its deposits, standing at Rs1.22 billion.

“Each year, out of Rs145.905 million we will be saving (from the head of salaries), half will go back to our main deposit and half will be spent on rehabilitation of physically challenged children across AJK,” he said.

Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2014