Senate Standing Committee emphasised for doubling allocation of funds to speed up the pace of socio-economic in Fata. These remarks were made by Eng. Rashed Khan, Chairman of the Senate Standing committee on Safron while presiding a high level meeting at Fata Secretariat.
Federal Minister for Safron Najamudin Khan was also present on the occasion. Senator Nasir Khan, Senator Haji Muhammad Adeel, Senator Anisa Zeb, Senator Abdul Ghaffar Qureshi, Senator Muhammad Saleh Shah, Members National Assembly Shaukat Ullah and Kamran Khan, Additional Chief Secretary Fata and high-ranking government officials were also present on the occasion.
Chairman of the committee said that Fata needs special treatment in the development strategies to integrate it with the development parts of the country. He said the dream of mainstreaming Fata would remain illusive until the fund allocation for uplift schemes is doubled.
He said that the current amount of allocation of ADP is 7.5 billion, which is not sufficient to meet the requirements of Fata. He said that 80 percent of the funds in the current ADP have to be spend on the completion of the ongoing schemes and a mega chunk of funds of 20 percent is allocated for new sachems.
The chairman standing committee proposed that the size of the ADP may be enlarged to Rs 15 billion so that the new schemes could get the required amount of financial resources for completion on time. The law and order situation is hindering the implementation of mega projects in far-flung areas of the Fata and the remove the prevailing bottlenecks, the senate would hold separate meetings with different departments and decisions made after consultations would be implemented accordingly.
He said to streamline the implementation process; the Senate Committee would work like a bridge between the Fata Secretariat and SEPRON so that the planning and execution of the development projects is done within the stipulated time. Senator Haji Adeel said that monitoring mechanism should be put in place to ensure the judicious utilisation of the resources on development schemes.
He said that if the funds earmark for education in Fata could not be utilised then it may to divert to education institutions in settled areas and scholarship quote should be increased for students of Fata till such time normalcy return to tribal areas. On this occasion Senator Saleh Shah proposed that some education institutions for Fata students should be established in settle districts bordering Fata like Tank, Kohat, Bannu and Peshawar.
The committee decided to constitute a sub-committee comprising of senator Abdul Razaq Khan, senator Ghafar Qureshi and senator Anisa Zeb to review and suggest the service structure of Fata DC employees of the Fata Secretariat. Earlier, the standing committee was given briefing about the sustainable development plan (SDP) for the uplift of Fata. The committee was told that 123 billion rupees would be spend over a period of nine years on the socio-economic development in these areas for this purpose 60 billions would be provided by Federal Government and the remaining 63 billions would be provided by the foreign donors.
The committee was told that Marble City would be established in Mohmand Agency at the coast of 351 million rupees whereas 85 percent work of geological mapping for the exploring of various minerals has been completed. The committee was informed that the vision behind SDP is mainstreaming tribal areas into the social economic and institutional fabric of the Fata.