SWABI: Tobacco cultivating areas here in the district are expected to soon receive a total of Rs256 million from tobacco cess development fund for the fiscal year 2016-17, sources in the tobacco companies and political parties said here on Saturday.

They said that according to rules the cess fund should only be used in tobacco cultivating districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on the welfare of the growers.

However, in past the lawmakers of various political partitas had violated this principle, they said.

Money to be spent on projects in tobacco-cultivating areas

The sources said that it was mandatory that the cess fund would be spent on the welfare of tobacco growers only.

Swabi, Mansehra, Charsadda, Mardan, Buner and Swat are the districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa who receive the cess fund each year through MPAs who are authorised to utilise it for development projects in tobacco producing areas in their constituencies.

They said that the Swabi district’s share in the cess fund was Rs255 million in financial year 2015-16.

They said that before release of the fund the MPAs of the respective district had to agree on the fund distribution formula.

The fund is provided to each district and then divided among the provincial assembly constituencies according to the crop production there.

However, sources said that in past this principle had been violated and the powerful party got a major chunk of the fund.

They said that instead of using the fund through independent sources for the growers’ welfare the provincial assembly members had been spending it on projects according to the party priorities.

Liaquat Yousafzai, general secretary of Kashthkar Coordination Council, said that MPAs usually utilised the fund to achieve their political objectives.

Sources said that four days ago a meeting of MPAs from the district, including KP Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser, was held in Peshawar.

There were serious differences on distribution of funds among them and that was the reason that release of the fund was delayed.

However, they said that they had agreed on a distribution formula and now it was expected that the fund would be released soon.

When contacted, Mr Qaiser said that they had agreed on distribution of the cess fund, which would be released soon.

He said that the fund would be utilised for the welfare of tobacco cultivators.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2017