HYDERABAD, Jan 18: District Nazim Kanwar Naveed Jamil has called for increase in funds for the rural areas of the district to bring them at par with the urban areas. He stressed the need to study the prevailing condition in different districts and talukas before releasing funds.

He was speaking at a function organized under the aegis of the Sindh Devolved Social Services Programme (SDSSP) on "Third party validation" on Thursday.

Mr Jamil said funds would be made available to each taluka of the district according to the number of union councils in it and added that monitoring of the development schemes would be ensured.

He hailed the cooperation and financial assistance of the Asian Development Bank in providing the people of Hyderabad basic facilities like education, healthcare and water supply.

He said in view of galloping increase in the population, the resources of the government were limited and under the circumstances, financial assistance by the ADB was laudable.

He said the SDSSP had facilitated availability of basic facilities to the people without which many projects would have remained incomplete due to paucity of funds.

Speaking on the occasion, Latifabad Taluka Nazim Sabir Hussain Kaimkhani said keeping in view the number of UCs, Latifabad was the second biggest taluka of the province, which comprised 60 per cent urban population and 40 per cent rural population.

He said the biggest challenges the taluka administration had to face were those of water supply, sewerage system and rehabilitation of infrastructure.

He said in a major portion of the taluka, open drain system was still in vogue which had not been repaired during the last 40 years.

The EDO of education and health and the town municipal officers of Hyderabad city, Jamshoro, Matiari and Tando Mohammad Khan presented details of development schemes of their areas and bottlenecks they had to face.

Kotri Taluka Naib Nazim Dr Saleem Tahir, SDSSP deputy director Mohammad Iqbal Memon and programme officer (water supply and sanitation) Mir Nusrat Panhwar were present on the occasion.

WORKSHOP: A workshop was held at the Jamshoro DCO office on Thursday on "Implementation of public procurement rules 2004 in district governments".

Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) chairman Syed Adil Gilani gave a presentation on the rules. He appreciated the efforts of Jamshoro district for having across the board transparency in different departments, particularly in the process of issuing and approving tenders.

He said that the TIP had offered development and maintenance of the website and e-complaint centre of Jamshoro district for one year as part of the process of transparency and good governance.