PESHAWAR, July 15: NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani has expressed dissatisfaction over the province’s development planners’ performance, criticizing the over ambitious annual development programme for 2003-04, sources said on Tuesday.

“The chief minister has expressed his unhappiness with the performance of the planning and development department of the province after the ruling alliance was taken for a ride by the opposition members during the course of debate on the ADP in the NWFP Assembly,” one of the sources said.

The NWFP government had set a target to spend Rs14.69 billion to carry out development schemes during the new financial year. The planned expenditure is an all-time high target set for development purposes by any of the successive provincial governments.

Officials, while talking to this correspondent, said that the chief minister also expressed unhappiness viz-a-viz ADP in his meetings with senior members of the provincial bureaucracy and senior authorities of the planning and development department - falling under the jurisdiction of the NWFP government’s senior minister Sirajul Haq of the Jamaat-i-Islami.

The new ADP envisaged taking up more than 1,300 new small- and medium-sized development schemes, including 325 ADP schemes that had been incorporated in this regard on the directives issued by the NWFP chief minister, provincial governor and the senior minister.

“Seventy per cent of the schemes included in the ADP in line with (these) directives are not feasible and envisages releasing amounts ranging between Rs30,000 and Rs100,000 for the commencement of work on each of the scheme,” one of the development planners said.

The total number of new schemes included in the new ADP would increase the NWFP government’s liabilities to Rs26 billion, amounting to the province’s requirements for completing all of the schemes forming part of the ADP for the new financial year.

“This will restrict options for subsequent years and may result in cost overruns for the provincial government,” said the official.

Provincial authorities concerned with ensuring implementation of the Drought Emergency Relief Assistance project and a couple of foreign-funded projects had also been censured by the NWFP chief minister, said the sources.

“ The chief minister,” said the official source “is not happy with the way the authorities concerned are handling the DERA project and this may lead to reshuffle in the planning and development department in the near future.”