ISLAMABAD, Jan 27: The federal government has asked the Balochistan government to improve its allocation of funds and monitoring mechanism with a view to ensuring effective and transparent utilization of uplift funds.

Informed sources told Dawn here on Thursday that the directive had been issued in the wake of complaints made by opposition parties and tribal chiefs that all was not well as far as overall development of the province was concerned.

The federal government wanted improvement in Balochistan's public sector resource management programme by ensuring increased participation of key stakeholders for transparent, accountable and sustainable public service provision.

This would be achieved, according to the directive, by providing fiscal space for sustainable development and by creating an enabling environment and supporting institutions for effective public service delivery, sustainable water management and private sector development.

A key aim of the programme is to remove concerns in fiscal decentralization and local government reforms. The sources said the federal government was considering offering increased funding to Balochistan especially in the next development programme.

A number of international agencies, including the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and bilateral donors including Japan, Netherlands, Germany, Canada and United Kingdom, will be approached to extend additional grants and soft-terms loans to help undertake development projects in Balochistan.

Initially, the sources said, a technical assistance worth about $30 million was being sought from the ADB, the United States and Netherlands for the Balochistan Resource Management Programme.

The scope of the resource management programme includes measures associated with reforms in police, laws and regulations, institutional strengthening and capacity building.

Balochistan's Finance Department would execute the resource management programme and its reform objectives would complement the governance reform objectives of decentralization support programme.

However, foreign agencies who were contributing in Balochistan's development have asked the government to select civil society members bearing in mind the following criteria: There should be no conflict of interest;

They should have an independent viewpoint; They should have a very good understanding of the issues involved in the decentralization and resource management and in case an organization is selected for membership, the NGO should not have any conflict of interest in its work on the steering committee and its relationship with programme implementation.

Alternatively, a civil society organization or its representative should have an experience in areas of interest to the resource management programme. Civil society members will be nominated in their personal capacity even belonging to organizations to provide them freedom of participation and taking decisions on the steering committee proposed to be set up soon.