HYDERABAD, May 4: Officials of the district government have not been able to prepare the budget for Hyderabad and any of the three new districts carved out of it. Official sources said that all the EDOs of Hyderabad district government have been asked to give budgetary allocations for the four districts including the new ones so that they could be submitted to the provincial finance department for approval.

The development side of the budget, i.e. Annual Development Programme (ADP), had been prepared as 20 per cent raise has been allocated to this head which would be accordingly bifurcated in the four districts.

The main issue, however, pertained to non-development expenditures including salary and non-salary components as the officials did not know the exact number of staff members for each group of office.

The non-development head budget would be prepared with 15 per cent increase.

Since there were no clear guidelines by the provincial finance department, EDOs were asked to present four separate budgetary estimates so that budget proposals could be submitted for all the four districts.

“Difference of opinion also emerges. For instance a group of office put forwarded different proposals to show that such and such number of staff would be required for it on taluka level in the newly demarcated Hyderabad district despite no such separate offices were working on taluka level as only one office was looking after three urban talukas of Hyderabad”, a source said.

Thus the said budgetary proposals were returned with the request that it should be in line with the previous directives.

In the current fiscal, district government had got Rs4.02 billion budget approved from district council for erstwhile district Hyderabad against one line budget of Rs3.16 billion, given by the Sindh government with Rs537 million going to development side (ADP) and Rs3.04 billion to the non-development expenditures including salaries of employees of Rs2746.310 million and non-salary expenses of Rs297.749 million for pre-bifurcated Hyderabad.

“So far the one line budget was not given and all the budgetary estimates were being prepared on the basis of population of each district which is very difficult given the allocations of non-development side budget”, the source said and added that on the basis of population budgets could not be prepared unless there are clear cut guidelines.

With 20 per cent increase in ADP for the four districts, it would now be estimated around Rs644 million to be divided in the light of population factor for four districts.