CHITRAL: District nazim Maghfirat Shah presented Rs3.55 billion annual budget of Chitral district government for the fiscal year 2017-18 here on Tuesday. This includes Rs165.8 million for development projects besides Rs3.22 billion salary and Rs151 million non-salary components.

Presenting the budget in the district council, he said that according to the existing rules 25 per cent of the development budget would be placed on the discretion of the house for further allocation to different sectors on need basis while education sector would get 20 per cent of the funds and the agriculture, women development and youth 5 per cent each.

The district nazim expressed his annoyance over the drastic cut in non-development funds of the district by the provincial government which, he said, were reduced from Rs320 million to Rs120 million. He also criticised the provincial government for employing delaying tactics in devolution of powers to the local government as provided in the Local Government Act envisaged before the election.

He said that the communication and works department and the public health engineering department had been excluded from the list of devolved departments thereby further weakening the district government.

“If the provincial government is not interested in the local government system it should wind it up and run the affairs through patwaris and tehsildars,” he said, adding that the district government was quite ‘toothless’ in case of those departments as well which had been devolved to it.

Mr Shah claimed that measures had been taken to deal with the situation arising out of the natural disasters such as flash floods, glacial lakes outburst floods and landslides, which had virtually paralysed the life across the valley.

Councillors Rahmat Ghazi, Ghulam Mustafa and Abdul Latif of PTI, Mufti Mahmoodul Hassan and Sher Mohammad of JUI and Mohammad Hussain of PML-N also spoke o this occasion.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2017