PESHAWAR: Mayor of the Peshawar Capital Metropolitan Government Haji Zubair Ali on Friday unveiled the first budget of the city council with an outlay of Rs4.49 billion and insisted that it was a balanced budget prepared with the consultation and guidance of all councillors and a special focus on development.

The 2022-23 budget has Rs1.5 billion allocation for the capital’s development. However, it has no funds for the development of devolved departments, which include primary and secondary education, social welfare, sports and youth affairs, agriculture (extension, livestock, soil conservation and fisheries), population welfare, municipal services including water and sanitation, rural development, public health engineering, coordination, human resource management, planning, development, finance and budgeting functions.

Mr Zubair later told reporters that the council used to approve budget for the city’s development and devolved departments but the provincial government had empowered the deputy commissioner to approve budget for the development of devolved departments.

He said the council members were wondered why there was no development budget for their areas.

Regrets diversion of city govt’s Rs300m funds to TMAs

The mayor alleged that the provincial government had empowered deputy commissioners with ‘ill intentions’ to approve development budget for devolved departments as that move would prompt councillors and their voters to criticise the mayor.

He said the provincial government had diverted Rs300 million capital metropolitan government budget to the weak tehsil municipal administrations without justification.

“Supporting weak TMAs is the responsibility of the provincial government and not the capital metropolitan government’s,” he said.

His budget speech highlighted three main windows of income, including Rs918 million to be received from the provincial government through the provincial finance commission, Rs316 million as octroi and Rs400 million as urban immovable property tax.

Similarly, Rs1.19 billion was reflected in the budget for the salaries of employees, Rs770 million for pension payments, Rs2 million for fuel, Rs120 million for electricity and Rs60 million for court cases.

Mr Zubair said Rs60 million would be utilised by his government on the development of the community, Rs120 million on the maintenance and repair of western and eastern zones of the city, Rs30 million on the installation of streetlights, Rs285 million on the unused property to increase revenue, Rs114 million on water supply and sanitation and Rs57 million on public parks and waiting areas.

He said Rs114 million would be spent on machinery for municipal services and water bowsers, Rs20 million for repair of electricity transformers, Rs7.5 million for natural disaster and Rs3 million for sports.

Talking to Dawn, Zubail Ali said the KP Local Government Act, 2013, had empowered the council to approve budget for devolved departments but the provincial government had usurped that right from the council through an executive order and given to the deputy commissioners for the current fiscal year. He said the provincial government has declared 2022-23 as the transitional period for the local government.

“The deputy commissioner of Peshawar has made budget for devolved departments and approved it without taking the people’s elected representatives on board,” he said.

The mayor said if the provincial government was bent on supporting and giving more and more powers to the bureaucracy, then why it held local body elections.

Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2022