MIRPURKHAS Aug 1: The DCO of Mirpurkhas, Abdul Rahim Soomro, issued non-salary component of the budget of the district government departments on Thursday.

These departments were without funds since one-and-half month and were facing problems which also caused differences between the DCO and the district nazim.

Report said that since the approval of the budget in June, the budget was not released by the DCO, who is the principal accounting officer, while the district council at its meeting had also demanded early release of the budget.

However, the DCO told District Nazim Dr Sughra Junejo and members of the council that he would order release of the budget after completion of documentation and said that the nazim had not sent him authentication letter.

Later, when the authentication letter was sent, it did not carry signatures of the DCO, the EDO of finance and the district naib nazim, hence it was an illegal order and he did not implement it under the SLGO 2001.When contacted, the DCO said that at the time of preparation of the budget, the district nazim insisted on 20 per cent increase in allocation for development schemes and for this purpose she curtailed budget of different heads of the government departments.

He said that the budget was prepared at the nazim’s office instead of at the district finance department and as a result, a number of mistakes and errors were detected in it.

He said that he would not implement illegal order of the nazim and he was issuing the non-salary budget with approval of higher authorities. The DCO had already issued the salary component of the budget.

He said the non-salary budget had been issued due to problems faced by the officers and people at different departments. He said he wound release the budget for development schemes only after completion of formalities.

The nazim was not available for her comments.