PESHAWAR, Sept 26: The new local governments at district and tehsil levels in the NWFP will begin their official business with a massive work-load as they will inherit over Rs500 million unspent development funds carried forward from the last financial year in addition to the funds earmarked for the 2005-06 financial year, official sources said.
In accordance with the Provincial Finance Commission (PFC) award, the NWFP government had allocated a total of Rs963.39 million for district development projects. Of that amount only 48 per cent could be spent by the close of the last financial year, leaving the provincial government to put the unspent amount at the disposal of the district government concerned at the start of the 2005-06 financial year.
The sources said that the new heads of district governments and town municipal administrations would inherit huge development agendas as each of the districts entails several number of ongoing development schemes — the works which were started by previous nazims but could not be completed before July last.
The sources said that the provincial government had not yet devised any uniform strategy for the emerging district governments as to how would they go about in respect of utilizing the uplift funds accrued from the past financial year.
However, they said that the government would need to devise a uniform strategy for the districts to follow, otherwise the new nazims could make things difficult for the provincial government whose hands were tied in accordance with its agreement with the World Bank — supporting structural reforms in provincial departments and their attached wings.
Out of the Rs963 million allocated for the district governments last year, an amount of Rs606 million was meant for the 24 district governments, Rs260 million among 50 tehsil/town municipal administrations and Rs96 million was to be utilized on the instructions of the provincial chief minister as his ‘special fund’.
However, district governments and their tehsil municipal administrations, according to official sources, failed to ensure 100 per cent utilization of the development funds.
Though the district governments and tehsil municipal administrations (TMAs) were released the total promised amount of the development funds, they continued to end up with poor a show as a huge amount remained unspent.
Figures compiled recently by the planning and development department of the NWFP reveal that over Rs500 million remained unspent out of the total amount.
Against Rs609 million distributed among the districts, they could spend only Rs289 million. Similarly, TMAs which were released about Rs260 million for their respective ADPs could spend only Rs119 million, whereas the chief minister spent Rs52 million against an amount of Rs96 million.
In all, Rs460 million could be utilized out of a sum of Rs963 million released to the district governments and TMAs, during the 2004-05 financial year.
The sources said that the new district nazims would confront a host of issues as several of the districts were under-staffed and many lacked capacity to effectively deal with the development funds that were put at the disposal of districts every year.