PESHAWAR, Aug 10: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government was ready to take responsibility of the newly devolved departments under the 18th Amendment, said Provincial Minister for Information Mian Iftikhar Hussain here on Wednesday.

Addressing a meeting of the Oversight Committee on Implementation of 18th Amendment, he rejected the notion that provincial government was reluctant to undertake the task.

Awami National Party provincial president Senator Afrasiab Khattak attended the meeting on special invitation.

Mr Hussain, who is also chairman of the committee, said in clear words that provincial government was serious in implementation of 18th Amendment “no matter anyone else is interested in it or not.”

The meeting thoroughly reviewed the situation emerging as a result of devolution of power form centre to provinces and preparation of the departments of local government and rural development, population welfare, Zakat and Ushr, social, welfare and women development, secondary, elementary and higher education, agriculture, livestock, cooperative, sports, culture, tourism, youth affairs, environment, food, health, labour and manpower, Auqaf, Haj and religious and minority affairs and energy sector.

The administrative secretaries briefed the meeting about their departments and the preparation.

They said that government's machinery was ready to take the new responsibilities being shifted to the provinces.

The meeting also debated health regulatory, centres of excellence, forest institute and energy policy.

The minister while expressing satisfaction over the progress directed the authorities concerned to complete their work within 45 days. Some elements wanted to make the provinces failed in shouldering their new responsibilities under 18th Amendment, he said.

He said that those elements wanted to see the powers shifted back to centre.

He said that provincial government would ensure implementation of 18th Amendment as the powers conferred on all the provinces under the same could not be imagined in the past.

Senator Khattak in his concluding remarks said that the government departments should not restrict themselves to Concurrent List alone as others powers were also shifted to other provinces under 18th Amendment that needed to be reviewed minutely.

“Now we have to concentrate on capacity building of our policy planning as it is necessary for our bright future,” he added.

Provincial ministers Sardar Hussain Babak and Arshad Abdullah and MPAs, Shagufta Malik and Adnan Khan also attended the meeting. — APP