PESHAWAR, May 24: The Civil Secretariat Fata has transferred Rs30 million from the Annual Development Programme for the tribal areas to the Sahibzada Abdul Qayum Memorial Trust for construction of a branch of the Islamia College in Swabi district.
A senior official said the government had transferred the money in order to help accommodate the Fata students against their reserved seats to the proposed campus of the Islamia College.
However, the sources claimed that the government didn’t have sound grounds for transferring the money, earmarked for Fata’s development, to the ‘settled’ districts.
The board of trustees of the trust, headed by NWFP Governor Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai, has chalked out a plan to establish a campus for the Islamia school, college and a university under the aegis of the trust in the Shah Mansoor area of Swabi district.
The trust is financing the project and the initial cost is about Rs600 million. Land has already been acquired for the project.
An official of the trust told Dawn that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani had pledged to provide grants of Rs30 million each for the college.
Following the prime minister and chief minister’s announcements, Governor Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai has announced the allocation of Rs30 million for the project from the Fata Annual Development Programme 2006-07.
Sources in the civil secretariat said that transferring huge sums of money from the Fata ADP to the one for the ‘settled’ areas had become a routine affair.
They said that some three years ago Rs15 million was transferred from the Fata ADP to the one for the ‘settled’ areas when money was set aside for the Fazl-i-Haq school and college in Mardan district.
Similarly, on the directives of the-then governor, Rs30 million was transferred from the Fata development plan 2004-05 for the renovation of the Governor’s House in Peshawar.
The sources said that on the governor’s directives funds were regularly transferred from the tribal areas’ ADP to various educational institutions in ‘settled’ areas of the province and other parts of the country instead of building standard educational institutions in the remote tribal region.
Since the mid-70s the government has not established any above-average educational institution in the tribal area except the Cadet College Razmak in the North Waziristan Agency.