PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to start giving Rs10,000 monthly honorarium to each prayer leader in the province from July 1.

The scheme would benefit around 22,000 prayer leaders. The provincial government will spend an amount of approximately Rs23 million per month and Rs2.5 billion per annum on the scheme.

The decision was made in a meeting of Auqaf department held here on Monday with Chief Minister Mahmood Khan in the chair. Besides Provincial Minister for Finance Taimur Saleem Jhagra, Special Assistant to Chief Minister on Auqaf Zahoor Shakir and Auqaf and Religious Affairs Secretary Shahid Sohail, the meeting was attended by other relevant high ups.

Zahoor Shakir told Dawn that homework for the scheme was almost completed and assistant commissioners were directed to furnish data of prayer leaders across the province including the merged districts.

Scheme delayed due to unavailability of data

He said that the department did not have accurate data of mosques and prayer leaders in the merged districts and the scheme would be formally launched from next financial year.

Mr Shakir said that one of the major reasons for delay in launching of the scheme was that Auqaf department did not have its own setup in every district.

For this purpose, the government has designated assistant commissioners as deputy administrators of Auqaf for maintaining data of prayer leaders and disbursement of honorarium.

He said that many prayer leaders did not apply for the scheme on political grounds. He said that only those prayer leaders, who submitted their personal bank account and copy of national identity cards, would receive the honorarium.

It is worth mentioning that JUI-F had opposed the honorarium scheme and alleged that government was trying to bribe ulema.

JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman had urged prayer leaders affiliated with his party to boycott the scheme.

An official statement said that the meeting discussed the progress made so far on the grant of honorarium to prayer leaders.

It was informed that through district administrations, data of all the prayer leaders in settled districts of the province was collected for grant of honorarium.

The chief minister directed the high ups of the department to expedite work on data collection of prayer leaders in the merged districts and complete all arrangements to provide honorarium to them across the province.

The meeting was briefed about the reforms being introduced in the department to strengthen it on modern lines and the proposed business plan to ensure better utilisation of the commercial properties of Auqaf across the province.

It was decided in principle to ban further extension in the lease period of commercial properties of the department to revise their rents and bring them at par with the market rates.

The meeting was informed that revision of the rents of those properties would increase the government’s revenue.

The meeting discussed in detail various measures including digitisation of records, synchronisation of land record of the department with that of revenue record, introducing an efficient system of financial management and internal audit and administrative restructuring to ensure good governance, transparency and efficiency in the affairs of the department and improve its overall working capacity.

Published in Dawn, January 6th, 2021