PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak has ordered reasonable increase in the salaries of provincial government employees and asked health and education departments to come up with viable proposals to divert major allocation to those sectors.

According to a statement issued here on Thursday, he was addressing a meeting that was held to finalise different schemes for education and health sectors. The meeting was attended by provincial ministers Mohammad Atif Khan and Shahram Khan Tarakai, Chief Secretary Abid Saeed, ACS Mohammad Azam Khan and administrative secretaries.

The chief minister said that government would inject Rs30 billion in education sector and Rs12 billion in health sector. “We want a healthy educated nation that could contribute to the national development. We are committed to bringing drastic improvement in health and education sectors. Provision of resources will never become a hindrance,” he added.

Mr Khattak warned against half-hearted efforts and flimsy excuses by different public sector institutions. He said that he would not accept below or average results.

He said that the performance graph of the government was up to the mark and would get further improved in the coming days. “We would judge our performance by the level of people’s satisfaction instead of statistics. The people of this province are bearing the brunt of the ill-conceived policies of the previous governments,” he added.

The chief minister said that government would never allow increase in taxes as it would overburden people. He said that government wanted to maintain strict financial discipline and cut down unnecessary expenditure so that the resources could be diverted to developmental strategy.

“We would also ensure transparent and judicious utilisation of resources. We would ensure that the developmental strategy is properly implemented,” he said.

Mr Khattak said that concept of planning for a school building should be done away with and the planning should be complete in all respects. He said that distance of 1.5 kilometres in hilly areas from a school for setting a new one should be decreased to half a kilometre.

He said that the new Annual Development Programme would include a women university along with dozen of universities, colleges and public libraries besides upgradation of three medical colleges and three civil hospitals.

He also agreed to provide Rs14 billion for purchase of different equipments for hospitals to be completed by June.

Mr Khattak accepted a proposal about provision of funds for buying medicines and other facilities. He also agreed to exclude Sehat Insaf Card Progrmme from the ADP.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2017