Daily Times

PESHAWAR: Analysing the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) fiscal year 2016-17, Rashda Dohad, Executive Director, Umer Asghar Khan Foundation (UAK) on Wednesday has said that the provincial government has failed to allocate 30 percent developmental funds to grassroots levels.

Mrs Dohad also pointed out that the Hazara division, which consists of six districts, including Abbottabad, Haripur, Battagram, Mansehra, Kohistan and Torghar were allocated funds of only Rs 4.54 billion, which was only 2.82 percent of the total developmental funds.

Similarly, she maintained that funds for Nowshera showed an increase from 3.08 percent of the total in the preceding year to 3.22 percent in the current fiscal year. The seven southern districts and six districts in Hazara division had their budgets cut from 3.2 percent to southern district and 3.1 percent to Hazara to 2.78 percent and 2.82 percent respectively.

“Inequities were also seen in regions such as D.I Khan, which has a massive population of 850,000, but has received Rs1.62 billion while Tank with an estimated population of 240,000 has been allocated Rs.10million” said Rashda. She called for a National Finance Commission (NFC) type of agreement for transparent distribution of developmental funds from the province to districts. She continued that a great opportunity had been missed by the Provincial Finance Commission constituted under KP’s Local Government Act2013 as it had not yet fulfilled its mandate to devise an equitation that explained the basis for allocating resources from the province to districts.

The restricted membership of PFC, she said, was also likely to deny broad-based ownership of any equation, adding that the PFC adopted an inclusive and consultative approach for devising an equation for resource distribution. She demanded of the provincial government to expand the circle of PFC membership and include Nazims from all the KP districts in it.

She added that there was also some disconnection between funds allocated and stated policy decisions. In March 2016, the KP government advertised to spend Rs.8 billion on the reconstruction of 760 destroyed schools in the devastating earthquake in 2005, but the government had failed to provide any money in this regard. Rashda continued that the FY2016-17 did not register the increased amount and continued to show a total of Rs3.7 billion for the reconstruction which had first been included in FY2014-15.