ATTOCK, Oct 21: The district coordination officer of Attock has said a stay order on utilisation of budget by the district administration for completion of ongoing development schemes has been vacated.

However, further proceeding on the petition filed by the district nazim is still under way. The stay order was issued by the court on October 15.

Addressing a press conference at his office on Tuesday, Saqib Zafar, the DCO, said allocation of funds for new development schemes was out of question as not a single new development scheme had been included in the current financial budget of the district due to lack of funds.

He said whenever the Punjab government would provide additional funds, it would be utilised for new development schemes.

Referring to the sacking of about 600 low-paid employees of some departments including Baildars (road maintainers) of works department, he said the decision had been taken after the finance department said the posts were not approved by it. Besides, the appointments were found illegal and against the recruitment procedures by a special audit team formed under Para No 91&92, he added.

“Just imagine that the summery of the said posts was approved by the chief minister on October 2, 2007, and, interestingly, the same day an advertisement about the posts was published in the press. The summary reached the DCO office after one day on October 3, 2007, which shows extreme violation of prescribed recruitment policy/procedure,” he added.

“However, if the court granted relief to the affected employees it will be honoured, as we are not against any individual or employee but have the prime responsibility to ensure merit, safeguard rule of law, ensure good governance and run/monitor all affairs of the district as per rules and regulations at any cost.” He said the previous district government had run the affairs violating rules.