LAHORE, Dec 22: The newly re-constituted Provincial Finance Commission on Thursday approved the mechanism for conditional grants for local governments to be released under the Punjab Devolved Social Services Programme. The newly-constituted 10-member body of the PFC met here with Punjab Finance Minister Hasnain Bahadur Dareshak.

The meeting was attended by chief secretary/finance secretary Salman Siddique, P&D chairman Salman Ghani, LG&RD secretary Akhlaq Tarar, special secretary finance Tariq Bajwa, Pacra managing director Javed Masood, Dr Imran Ali of LUMS, Shahzad Husain, Faisal Mukhtar and Muhammad Safdar Sahi.

The meeting approved the mechanism and proposed separate drafts of MoU for district governments and tehsil municipal administrations. They said the MoU drafts were finalized and approved by the chief minister after consultation with all the departments concerned.

It was explained at the meeting that the provincial government had initiated the PDSSP with the assistance of the Asian Development Bank and the Department for International Development (DFID) to assist in improving the service delivery in the district governments and education, special education and water and sanitation.

There were certain conditions to be qualified for the release of such grants and all other conditions had been fulfilled, except the approval of this mechanism by the PFC.

The meeting was informed that after accomplishing this last condition, the government would be able to utilize and distribute an amount of $60 million under the programme. In this respect, the MoU would be signed between the provincial and district governments and TMAs.