Opposition declines to accept Khyber Pakhtunkhwa budget

Opposition parties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Wednesday continued their debate on provincial budget and declined to accept PTI budget for 2014-15. The debate was opened by the leader of Qaumi Wattan Party (QWP), Sikandar Hayat Sherpao, who termed KP budget a heavy deficit budget while Sardar Hussain Babak of ANP criticised the PTI government for lacking vision and incapable to take new initiatives.
Sardar Aurangzeb Nalotha of PML-N and Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli of QWP also participated in the debate and complained of injudicious distribution of the resources of the province. Chief Minister Pervez Khattak also heard the speeches of the Opposition legislators with keen interest and took notes of them.
Participating in debate, QWP leader, Sikandar Hayat Sherpao termed several levies in the finance bill as unconstitutional and rejected the budget. He said that the provincial budget for financial 2014-15 contains a huge deficit of Rs 64 billion, which is 15.8 percent of the total outlay of Rs 404.80 billion. He said that the developmental budget has a shortfall of Rs 12 billion. Similarly, he said that a deficit of Rs 14 billion was shown in the net capital amount of outgoing year while the calculation of the same with the last year will reach the total deficit to Rs 64 billion.
He said that the PTI government had failed in bringing improvement in governance and even after the passage of the period of one year no change has witnessed in the province. He said that though the government is taking credit of heavy legislation's like RTI Law, Ehtesab Commission and local government, but none of them were implemented so far. Sikandar Sherpao said that southern districts, Malakand and Hazara have been ignored in the budget and called for the removal of this disparity.
In response to the speech of Sikandar Sherpao, Provincial Minister for Information, Shah Farman said that all legislation's were made in consultations with Opposition. Similarly, Sardar Hussain Babak of ANP demanded the government to review the budget. KP Education Minister Mohammad Atif rejected the criticism of Sardar Hussain Babak and Sardar Aurangzeb Nalotha and said that the government has introduced reforms in both health and education departments.