SUKKUR, June 27: The district Nazim, Sukkur, Syed Nasir Hussain Shah, on Friday presented a Rs1.72 billion budget for the fiscal 2003-4, which did not include any new taxes.

The budget was presented before the district council session, which was chaired by the district Naib Nazim, Iqbal Dawood. It will be debated for the next two days.

According to the break-up given in his speech, total receipts of Rs1.73 billion were shown against the same amount of expenditure.

He said an amount of Rs1.34 billion was earmarked to meet the expenditure under the head of salary and non-salary, while Rs247.42 million were earmarked for pension, gratuity of the staff, as well as salary/non-salary of the district Nazim and Naib Nazim, Rs188 million would be spent on development under ODP (PSDP) during the budgetary period of 2003-2004.

Referring to past year’s performance of the district government, he said that funds of Rs12.70 million were distributed among SMCs, so that they could spend for development of education in the schools of their areas.

He spoke about the fulfilment of a major demand of Sukkur of a medical college, which would be functional before the end of this year.

He said a Mother and Child Centre will be set up at Salehpat Taluka at a cost of Rs5 million to be provided by a multinational oil exploration company, EMV (Pakistan) Ltd.

He listed several development schemes to be undertaken in the year under review, including cattle colony of Sukkur, cattle colony of Rohri, drainage of Sukkur city, bus terminal Rohri, upgradation of filtration plant Sukkur, filter plant Rohri, development of Lab-e-Mehran and establishment of an amusement park, completion of Cadet College at Pano Aqil, and shifting of food grain Mandi and iron market from Sukkur city to the outskirts of Sukkur.

The district Nazim said that due to the rising graph of unemployment in Sukkur district, attention was focused on the development of SITE area, Dates Market, Small Industries Estate and Sabzi Mandi.

He said the government is constituting a committee which will assist and facilitate unemployed people to avail the facility of micro-credit loaning through the Khushhali Bank.

He said 30 villages in the district will be provided electricity next year.

KILLED: A landlord of Mirpur Mathelo was shot dead by five robbers here on Tuesday night.

The armed men barged into the house of Ghulam Mohammad for robbery.

They opened fire on the landlord who woke up and challenged them. The landlord died on the spot.