LAKKI MARWAT: Members of the Lakki Marwat district council on Friday asked the district government to order probe into the alleged anomalies in the utilisation of the public health engineering department’s maintenance and repair funds.

They also complained many tubewells in rural localities of the district had long been inoperative.

The council met here to debate non-developmental budget with treasury member Haleem Khan in the chair.

The treasury and opposition members unanimously approved the non-development budget with a total outlay of over Rs4 billion.

Some councilors complained residents of rural areas in the district faced the shortage of water due to faulty tubewells.“The public health engineering department insists they’re unable to repair tubewells due to shortage of funds,” said a councillor.

He said the use of funds allocated by the government for tubewell maintenance and repairs should be properly examined.

Other members complained despite massive allocation of funds, people in the district didn’t have access to most civic services.

They said the people who had pinned high hopes on the local government system were disappointed at the poor performance of local bodies.

Some members insisted the health department’s partner organisations had recruited incompetent and undeserving people for handling the polio vaccination refusal cases in the district.

They demanded the immediate termination of all such workers before fresh recruitment in consultation with district councillors.

The councillors said the powers delegated to local governments under the law existed on paper only.

They demanded the formation of standing committees of the district council to monitor government departments and thus, ensuring improvement of their performance.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2016