PESHAWAR, July 12: The NWFP government has allocated a sum of Rs2.15 billion to complete 38 projects, 31 ongoing and seven new regional uplift projects, in the province, official sources said on Wednesday.

The government has included the Malakand Rural Development Programme (MRDP), the Barani Area Development Project (BADP), the Dir Area Support Project (DASP) and the Community-Based Resource Management (CBRM) project in the ADP for fiscal 2006-07 aimed at reducing poverty ratio in rural areas, the sources said.

The people of 16 districts would benefit from these projects. To utilize the merits of these projects, sources said, 44 kilometres long provincial roads, and 370 km roads in rural areas would be constructed during the current fiscal which would facilitate the people of far flung areas to have access to main highways.

Similarly, the sources said, construction work on 47 small hydro power stations would be launched in 2006-07 and 609 water courses would be undertaken for construction.

The sources further said that 160 projects of irrigation would be completed while 1,333 clean drinking water projects would be started. Arrangement has also been made to provide irrigation water to 21950 acres.—APP