TIMERGARA: About Rs1.14 billion has been spent over 400 small development projects completed in Lower Dir district under the Community Driven Local Development (CDLD), an initiative of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government.
This was stated by a member of the district development committee (DDC) while talking to Dawn on Monday.
The Lower Dir deputy commissioner heads the DDC.
The member while requesting not to be named said the DDC had given approval to 552 small projects in all the 41 union councils of Lower Dir, adding work on over 400 projects, including link roads, street pavements, clean drinking water, additional rooms in schools and hospitals, had been completed. He said Rs1.14 billion had been spent on these projects.
Under the CDLD programme, the KP government has been initiating small development projects through community participation in six districts -- Lower and Upper Dir, Chitral, Swat, Shangla and Malakand.
The Sarhad Rural Support Programme has been contributing in social mobilisation under the CDLD policy.
SRSP village development officer, Akbar Khan, told Dawn the programme had entered its second phase and extended till 2020.
He said SRSP was mobilising local communities, organising them and building their capacity to prepare their plans for development, budgeting and proper documentation. He said a total of 761 community based organisations had so far applied for development projects.
BUDGET APPROVED: The Lower Dir district council on Monday unanimously approved Rs7.9 billion tax-free budget for the fiscal year 2018-19. The budget session continued for four days with the council convener Abdul Rashid in the chair.
District nazim Mohammad Rasool Khan, opposition leader Inayatullah, members from both treasury and opposition benches termed the budget a balance one.
The council agreed to reduce non-developmental expenses.
Some of the members taking part in debate said employees of population welfare, cooperative, sports and fisheries drew millions of rupees each month in salaries but their performance was next to nil.
They said the employees of these departments were burden on the exchequer. They also demanded inquiry into sports’ fund distributed among various people.
District nazim Rasool Khan said the assistant director local government had been given vehicles so he should improve performance of his department in the district. The nazim said vehicles would be taken back if the department’s progress was not satisfactory.
He asked the departments to complete the ongoing development projects timely.
Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2018
