PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has utilised 103 per cent of the funds it got for the Annual Development Programme in 2016-17 owing to timely re-appropriation of the allocation to the schemes showing good progress.

It is the highest utilisation of development funds by the health department. The regular review meetings led to diversion of funds from low-paced schemes to the faster ones.

Details shared with Dawn showed that health department received Rs546.200 million supplementary grants in addition to original allocation of Rs10,651 million of ADP, which made up Rs11,026.846 million revised allocation for the fiscal 2016-17.

Review meetings lead to highest utilisation of allocated amount

The expenditure remained Rs11.021billion of the total allocation Rs11.026 billion, which meant that only Rs5 million got lapsed, according to documents.

The health department had spent 96 per cent of ADP funds in 2014-15 and 100 per cent in the financial year of 2015-16. The department has been able to speed up the completion of major development schemes at the hospitals.

In 2012-13, the department surrendered Rs2.6 billion and in 2013-14 Rs2.9 billion because of lack of capacity of fund utilisation. However, as per rules of finance department, surrendering of funds doesn’t affect the efficacy of any department, provided the funds are returned before June 30, the last date of the financial year.

The unspent funds by the end of financial year are called lapsed that shows inefficiency of any government department.

During the last financial year, health department surrendered Rs2.3 billion allocated to slow paced schemes and re-appropriated the same to hospitals owing to speedy work to ensure utilisation of funds and timely completion of those projects.

Lady Reading Hospital was given additional Rs1.463 billion for multi-storey building housing wards, operation theatres and offices to be able to complete it this year.

Category A hospital in Malakand got Rs60 million, Kohat Institute of Medical Science got Rs210 million, Institute of Nursing Khyber Medical University Rs67 million, Rs67 million was allocated to purchase equipment for hospitals, Sehat Sahulat programme got Rs70 million, Category A hospital in Kulachi Tank got Rs70 million, Fountain House got Rs123 million, Maternal and Child Centre Charsadda got Rs216 million and Rs215 million was allocated for Category D hospitals in Dag Ismail Khel, Ziarat Kaka Sahib and Manki Sharif, Nowshera.

Also, Category C hospital in Topi received Rs65 million additional allocation, Bacha Khan Medical Complex Swabi got Rs135 million and district headquarters hospital got Rs221 million due to review meetings where progress on these projects was appreciated and additional allocation was made.

Officials said that speedy completion of schemes also led to saving of amount because the cost of project increased every year owing to hike in price of material. The health department also held need-based reviews meetings in addition to quarterly evaluation of the ongoing projects wherein discussion regarding the issues and progress took place.

The department, officials said, instead of surrendering fund to the planning and development department, which allocated the same to other schemes in any department on need-basis, re-appropriated funds by giving additional amount to the ones having speedy progress from the ones having slow progress.

Officials said that intra-sectoral appropriation of funds had been the main cause of the department’s ability to spend the allocated amount and complete the schemes within the stipulated time.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2017