Punjab government has instructed its Planning & Development (P&D) department to delete all schemes relating to street soling and drainage filed by the members of provincial assembly for the fiscal year 2008-09, sources close to the provincial government said.
The chief minister Punjab, said the sources, has taken notice of the trend and asked the P&D department to shift the focus of development work from street soling and drainage to education and health sectors.
It is worth mentioning that the provincial government has allocated a total of Rs 160 billion under its Annual Development Programme (ADP) in fiscal year 2008-09, out of which Rs 12 billion is being transferred to the Tehsil Municipal Administrations (TMAs) besides block allocations for different provincial departments.
Sources privy to the developments informed that an average amount of Rs 40 million has been fixed for each member of provincial assembly to carry out ongoing and new development projects in their respective constituencies. However, it is interesting to note that the number of development schemes for street soling and draining is higher than other social sectors, including health and education.
The development experts have further pointed out that previous provincial government had also tried to block this trend. Especially, former Chairman P&D Salman Ghani took strong exception and declined many such schemes from the members of last provincial assembly.
However, it could not sustain the pressure long and former chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi after surrendering to the political pressure from the members had instructed the P&D department officials to start entertaining such schemes.
This restriction continued for all the ministers of provincial Cabinet and the former chief minister had strictly asked the P&D department not to entertain any application from any provincial minister including the provincial minister for finance and planning and development.
Therefore, the development documents do not reveal a single scheme of such a nature from district Rajan Pur, the home district of former provincial finance minister Hasnain Bahadur Dreshak. Especially, the MPs from Southern Punjab, said the experts, are more interested in having roads to their deras (political hubs) instead of asking for development of school buildings and hospitals.
To tackle with the trend, said sources, the provincial government has this time introduced the concept of block allocation. Under this programme, certain amounts are allocated to different sectors, including health and education besides roads construction.
"The Punjab government has released Rs 70 billion, around 45 per cent, out of total development outlay of Rs 160 billion since the start of fiscal year," said Tanvir Ashraf Kaira, provincial finance and planning & development minister, adding: "But the utilisation of released amount is not more than 20 per cent."
Though the utilisation is even less than 5 per cent if one compares it with actual allocation of development fund of Rs 160 billion. It is also interesting to note that the allocations for ADP by the Punjab government have been triggering unparalleled over the last few years. Like, allocation of funds under ADP was merely Rs 20 billion in fiscal year 2003-04.
The ADP allocation should not be more than Rs 40 billion even if it increases by 100 per cent in the last five years. But it triggered to Rs 44 billion in 2004-05, followed by Rs 66 billion in 2005-06, Rs 93 billion in 2006-07 and Rs 150 billion in 2007-08, which was later on revised to Rs 121 billion by the last government on the objections raised by the donor agencies.
The present government, instead of learning a lesson from past, has increased it further to Rs 160 billion simply to score politically like the previous government. The departments, on the other hands, are not capable to meet with heavy development allocations due to technical and infrastructure inability.
"The planning cells of all provincial departments have weakened badly over the years and no tangible schemes are possible under the prevailing circumstances," said the sources. Therefore, they added, heavy development allocations are left at the mercy of MPs, whose top priority is to get funds for street soling and drainage.
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