HARIPUR, July 8: About 82 community citizen boards (CCBs) have been formed while many are in the registration process in different union councils of Haripur, said EDO Dr Fazal Mehmood told Dawn here on Thursday.

The executive district officer of the Haripur social welfare and community development said the boards were part of the devolution plan and Local Government Ordinance 2001.

These boards will help ensure participation of community members in decision-making and in executing development projects. Speaking about the formation and functions of the CCBs, Dr Fazal told that right from the union council level to the district council administration, all the three tiers of the local government system were required to put aside 25 per cent of their entire development budget for the CCB-specific schemes.

The CCBs would contribute only 20 per cent cost of the project while the rest 80 per cent would be borne by the local governments. He told that union councils and their higher tiers had been allocating funds for the CCBs for the last two years, but the money remained unused as the boards were not fully functional.

The tehsil municipal administration Haripur, he told, had a sum of Rs8.6 million unspent due to delay in the formation of the boards by the communities. In reply to a question, he told that as per nomenclature of a CCB, any 25 members from the community could form a board, but there was no directives about the share of participation of women in a CCB.

He said that in case of more than one CCBs running for the same project in the same locality, the local government would prefer those that was offering over 20 per cent of the mandatory contribution for a project.

About training of CCBs member, he told that the Devolution Trust for Community Empowerment, an NGO, was funding the formation and training of the CCBs countrywide. A training programme for the CCB members was scheduled to begin in Haripur from July 16.

He said members would be imparted techniques of preparing budget proposals for projects, feasibility reports and other related matters. The trust had disbursed Rs20,000 per union council in Haripur for the formation of the CCBs, he told.