PESHAWAR, July 3: The Peshawar city district government on Wednesday presented a surplus budget for the financial year 2002-03 with its receipts projected at over Rs1.87 billion and expenditure at Rs1.85 billion.
The budget reflected Rs14 million surplus receipts with no new taxes.
A big amount of the total Rs1.87bn receipts would come from the provincial government. The money to be transferred to the district government by the provincial government during the 2002-03 financial year has been accounted for at Rs1.43 bn whereas the remaining amount of Rs441.5m would be raised by the district government from its own resources.
The money to be transferred by the provincial government makes 76.5 per cent of the total annual receipts the district government is expecting for the year. Whereas, only 23.5 per cent revenue receipts of the district government would come from its internal resources.
A total of Rs363m would be spent on development works including an amount of Rs258.5m which would be spent on executing provincially funded development projects whereas remaining amount of Rs105m would be utilized to execute development projects designed by district government.
Hence, out of the total of Rs1.85 bn current expenditure budget a sum of Rs1.48 bn would be eaten up by the non-developmental expenditure making over 80 per cent of the total expenditure budget.
Announcing the budget of the city government, district Nazim, Mohammad Azam Khan Afridi, claimed that the efforts have been made to prepare people-friendly budget. To that end, he said that funds have been allocated to the departments falling under the jurisdiction of the city government.
“Education, health, agriculture, communication, public health, environment, civil defe-nce and municipal services are being strengthened in order to facilitate the people,” claimed Mr Afridi while delivering his budget speech in the district assembly.
An amount of Rs128m have been embarked for the completion of the ongoing projects launched under the Khushhal Pakistan Programme (KPP) and other development programmes, he said, adding that apart from the special grant of Rs71.48m of the provincial government, an amount of Rs20m would be spent from local fund on the development schemes. Mr Afridi said that Rs12m has been allocated to start projects for the welfare of women in consultation with the women members of the district assembly.
Projects for the welfare of labourers and peasants would be launched costing Rs2m and a similar amount would be spent for the welfare of minorities. Another Rs1m would be spent on the social welfare activities.
A big amount of Rs30m has been reserved for the provision of wheel chairs and medicines to the handicapped, rehabilitation of the drug addicts and construction and repair rehabilitation centres for the handicapped.
Mr Afridi said that last year many schools had faced closure due to non-payment of rents. This time, he said an amount of Rs0.5m has been reserved to pay for rented schools while Rs2.5m has been kept for the repair work at the secondary schools.
Referring to the non-availability of medicines at dispensaries and BHUs, the district Nazim said that Rs3m has been reserved for the provision of medicines and another Rs1.5m would be spent on the repair work at the buildings housing dispensaries and BHUs. As the provincial government wasn’t providing funds for the repair work at the technical education centres, an amount of Rs5m would be spent under that head.
According to him, Rs5m would be spent on the repair of roads in the city while another Rs3m would spent on the repair of tubewells being operated under the public health engineering department. Last year, he said there was no funds to compensate the losses of calamity-hit people, this time Rs2m has been allocated in this head. Besides construction of labour halls at bus terminals for the drivers and conductors, repair of the fire- brigades would also be carried out.