PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has claimed that its departments have utilised 99 per cent of the released funds for development projects during the last financial year and 100 per cent of development funds meant for tribal districts.

A statement issued here on Tuesday said an Annual Development Programme (ADP) review meeting, chaired by Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, was informed that during the previous two financial years, funds utilisation against the released amount remained 99 percent whereas no funds were lapsed.

It said that the overall performance of provincial departments remained satisfactory despite challenging circumstance.

The statement said that performance of agriculture department with regard to implementation of development schemes was on the top with 86 scores while performance of local government and public health engineering departments remained second and third respectively.

CM directs departments to ensure timely approval of schemes

During the previous financial year, Rs55 billion was utilised on development projects in the tribal areas. It is 100 per cent of the released funds.

The forum was appraised that some 249 development projects were approved under the ADP for settled districts while 88 schemes were approved for tribal districts. Similarly, 122 uplift projects were approved for tribal districts under the Accelerated Implementation Programme (AIP).

The meeting decided that completion of ongoing schemes would be given priority in the ADP of next financial year and efforts would be made to allocate 90 per cent funds for the completion of ongoing projects.

It also decided that in the light of the guidelines issued by Planning Commission of Pakistan, preparations for next year ADP would be started at the earliest for which all departments would have to submit their project profiles to provincial planning and development department timely. It was also decided that without proper PC-1, no scheme would be included in ADP.

The chief minister directed the provincial departments to ensure timely approval of all their schemes. He said that all the departments should get approval of their schemes reflected in the current ADP by October 30, failing which action would be taken against the administrative secretary concerned.

He said that creation of new posts for completion of schemes involving hiring of human resource should also be ensured timely.

He added that schedule of new expenditures for hiring the required staff for such projects should stand approved before completion of the schemes.

“A mechanism should be put in place to remove observations of planning department on PC-1s there and then so that unnecessary delay in implementation of public welfare schemes could be avoided” said Mr Khan.

He also directed the officials to issue red letters to the departments with unsatisfactory performance as per the monitoring and evaluation report.

The statement said that matters related to regularisation of salary-based schemes in tribal districts also came under discussion in the meeting and it was decided that establishment department would prepare a case to that effect for approval of the competent forum.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2020