ISLAMABAD: The federal government has released Rs11 billion for development projects in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during the first six months of the current fiscal year from an allocation of Rs24 billion made under the public sector development programme (PSDP) for 2011-12.

The PSDP for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata was reviewed at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani here on Tuesday.

Planning and Development division secretary Asif Bajwa said that work on 146 projects in the province in power, highways, physical planning, science and technology, health and education sectors was in progress. He said that priority was given to the projects which had been completed to the extent of 60 per cent.

He said the allocation for Fata had been increased from Rs9 billion to Rs15 billion on the instruction of the prime minister and more than Rs6 billion had been released by the end of Dec 2011.

He said the federal government released Rs100 million on Tuesday for the revolving fund to pay compensation to the victims of terrorism.

The prime minister was informed that as per his instructions, a grant of Rs2 billion has been released for resuming the work on the Lowari Tunnel which was stopped because of paucity of funds.

He said the government was attaching the highest priority to socio-economic development of KP and Fata because they were facing the major brunt of terrorism.

The planning and development policy was being pursued as part of the government’s three-pronged counter-terrorism policy marked by ‘dialogue, development and deterrence’, Mr Gilani said.

Wapda chairman Shakeel Durrani highlighted the importance of Kurram-Tungi and Munda dams and said that these dams would provide boost to the agriculture sector in KP having the capacity to store water up to 2.31 million acre feet of water inaddition to saving people from flash floods. These dams would generate about 800MW of power. Mr Durrani said the mega Dassu dam was a promising project having the generation capacity of 4,300MW electricity, and the World Bank had expressed the willingness to provide assistance to build the spillway.

He said that the Tarbela-4 project had been economically viable since the civil work was already in place and on completion it would generate an additional 610MW of electricity.

Secretaries of finance and planning division said that they would extend full support to Fata to set up cadet colleges in each agency with a view to provide quality education to the youth as per directive of the prime minister. They said themainstreaming of the youth would serve as bulwark against the forces of terrorism and extremism and help undermine the extremist tendencies.  They said the federal government would extend all possible assistance for setting up Fata University,Fata Medical College and Fata Engineering University.

Mr Gilani directed Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission Dr Nadeem-ul-Haque to supervise the progress in setting up institutions of higher education of learning and excellence in Fata.

Finance Secretary Waqar Masood Khan informed the meeting that the Fata administration had been allowed to recruit 1,000 staff to be posted in the projects meant to provide services to people.

He said that the demand to recruit 6,000 more staff members would be met after the recruitment of 1,000 new staff to begin with.

Communications Secretary Anwar Ahmed Khan and the National Highway Authority chairman informed the meeting that Mansehra-Naran Jalkot road was almost complete while land acquisition for Hassanabad-Havelian Expressway was in progress.