MANSEHRA: The Mansehra district council on Monday unanimously approved the Rs8.5 billion revised budget for the current financial year.

The council’s unanimous nod to the budget is unprecedented.

District nazim Sardar Said Ghulam thanked all parliamentary parties for approving the budget without dissent in the ‘larger public interest’.

The main opposition party in the house, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, also voted for the budget in line with an agreement reached between and the PML-N district government on Sunday.

The nazim said the government had reduced the developmental chunk of the budget to over 20 percent and therefore, the approval of the revised budget was needed to get funds.

Nazim appreciates unanimous approval of the budget

He said of the allocated money, Rs6.9 billion would go to the salary of employees of devolved government departments.

“We have earmarked Rs278 million for non-developmental and Rs441 million for developmental purposes in the district,” he said, adding that Rs4 million had been earmarked for local funds.

The nazim said he wanted the heads of devolved departments to strictly follow the pre-monitoring mechanism for the budget in line with the government’s directions.

He said violators of the order would be denied the budgetary share next year.

The nazim warned the officials not respecting the local government’s representatives would be dealt with strictly.

He said the district government would give away awards to teachers and students, who had performed well up to the next August under his education vision programme.

The nazim also tabled a resolution in the house seeking the launch of a water supply scheme, which, he said was capable of ending the current crisis in the city and its suburbs.

Parliamentary leaders Malik Farooq of the PPP and Malik Naveed of the JUI-F told the council that the local government elections should never be held on party basis as it was such a forum, which worked for provision of civic amenities, but the party’s tussles deprived the people of development.

MANKILLED: A man was killed in Timbah area of Shinkiari on Monday.

The deceased, Mohammad Mehmood, was released from jail after serving 17 years prison term.

He had gone to meet relatives in Timbah village from Laborkot.

The people took him to the Civil Hospital Shinkiari but doctors pronounced him dead.

The police handed over the body to the family after postmortem was performed on it.

The police sources said Mr Mehmood had killed his sister-in-law over a land dispute in 1999 and was arrested later on.

Shinkiari police station SHO Saeedur Rehman said the police had registered an FIR, while efforts had been begun for the early arrest of assailants.

Published in Dawn, April 25th, 2017