PESHAWAR, March 18: The city district government, Peshawar, and its four town municipal administrations (TMAs) are not likely to utilize 100 per cent of the development funds put at their disposal for carrying out development activities during the 2003-04 financial year, sources told Dawn.
The city district government, its four TMAs and 92 union councils are jointly supposed to spend over Rs55 million by June 30 after being provided the funds a month ago.
The task of spending 100 per cent of the available resources appears to be a difficult proposition for the local government institutions because they are still engaged in giving final touches to their respective annual development programmes and schemes to be carried out during the current financial year.
The city district government got its ADP approved from the district council on Feb 26 last, leaving it with only four months to ensure 100 per cent utilization of the funds allocated to Peshawar district under the Provincial Financial Commission (PFC) award.
Similarly, the city district government's Town-1 got its ADP approved for the current financial year on Feb 28 requiring it to utilize the funds in four months.
"We are in the process of inviting tenders for development schemes from the interested parties," said Haroon Bilour, Nazim of Town-1. As per the PFC award, out of the total funds put at the disposal of a district government for development purposes, 60 per cent goes to the district council, 30 per cent to the TMAs and 10 per cent to the union councils.
Before distributing the funds among the district, towns and union councils, 25 per cent of the total funds are required to be specified for the Citizen Communities Boards (CCBs) - required to be constituted by citizens on their own to support development activities at the grassroots level through community participation.
The prospects of utilizing 100 per cent of the funds appears to be bleaker after the district council failed to develop consensus on the ADP following which a special committee of the district council was constituted to finalize the number of schemes to be carried out during the current financial year.
"The district council had approved the ADP under duress only to facilitate utilization of the allocated funds," said Mr Saeed But, Nazim of a union council, adding that "the special committee had been necessitated and tasked to hold discussions with the council members to remove their reservations about the ADP."
According to information gathered from different official quarters, once the special committee completed its assigned task the number of schemes approved by it for execution during the current financial year would be forwarded to the district development committee (DDC) for holding scrutiny to determine viability of the schemes.
The DDC, headed by the district coordination officer (DCO), is authorized to scrap any number of developed schemes after finding them unviable in the scrutiny process.
"DDC's proceedings are under progress and would take some time to let the physical execution of schemes get commenced formally," said an officer concerned, adding that "though the district government's ADP was approved on Feb 26, physical execution of development schemes would take some more time after fulfilling procedural requirements."