Schemes for newly-merged districts: Non-utilisation of funds by KP govt irks Senate panel

The Senate Standing Committee on Planning, Development and Special Initiatives has expressed serious concern over negligence of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government for not utilising funds for development schemes meant for the newly-merged districts of the province.

The committee met with Senator Agha Shahzaib Durrani in the chair at the Parliament House Thursday.

The committee discussed the funds for merged areas/10 years development programme, merged districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, security enhancement, and current status of the project, Karachi-Lahore Motorway (land acquisition CPEC) Sukkur-Hyderabad Section.

The joint secretary Finance told the committee that Rs20.94 billion had been the budgeted allocation for the financial year 2019-2020 for development projects under the Annual Development Programme (ADP) for the merged districts.

He said that the entire amount had been released to the KP government but it could not utilized.

The Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Secretary, Zafar Hasan, told the committee that Rs20.94 billion funds were purely under the Finance Ministry and there was not requirement for the Finance Ministry to forward PC-I of the projects to the Planning Commission.

He said that a total of Rs48 billion had been the federal budgetary allocation under the PSDP 2019-2020 for development projects of the Merged Areas 10 Years Development Plan in which Rs23 billion had been released.

He said that a total of Rs24 billion was the budgeted allocation for merged districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of which Rs9 billion had been released for development projects. He said that the KP province had been allocated Rs11 billion for this purpose.

Committee Chairman Agha Shahzaib Durrani asked Secretary Zafar Hasan that Minister Asad Umar should take up the issue of utilization of funds with the KP government to expedite the utilization of funds.

He said that if the KP government did not have the capacity to utilize the funds then the federal government should spend this money for other small projects for the welfare of the people.

Senator Usman Kakar said that the people of merged areas were suffering.

He said that the KP government had a huge amount of many but it was unable to utilize them for their welfare.

Meanwhile, the director general (Planning) Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa said that an amendment in Land Acquisition Act was required and for this purpose we are going to submit a draft of legislation to the cabinet for approval.

He said that we are facing problems in launching projects and this amendment was to restore the previous procedure for development projects.

About Accelerated Implementation Programme (AIP), it was told in the financial year 2018-2019 a total of Rs10 billion were released for development projects under this programme, out of which Rs5.14 billion were utilized (51 percent).

Likewise, a total of Rs19 billion have been released in the current fiscal year for the projects out of which Rs11.71 billion were utilized (40 percent) so far.

For industries schemes (Insaf Rozgar Scheme), it was told that a total of Rs10 billion out of Rs14.28 billion have been released of which Rs5.14 billion (51.4 percent) were utilized in the current fiscal year.

Regarding inclusion of Gwadar to Quetta Railway project in the ML-I Railway Project, the secretary (planning) told the committee that ML-I was planned from Peshawar to Karachi a CPEC project, and other projects could not be included in it due to lack of funds.

He said that there was a CPEC Joint Framework Agreement and "we reflect various projects in it."

He said that we discussed railway track from Gwadar-Zhob-Peshawar with China.

He said that we have divided the two components of a project; first component is land acquisition and second to launch the project. We will not start projects without the completion of land acquisition because many projects faced delay due to problems of land acquisition.

Director NHA Rasool Bux told the committee about land acquisition for Sukkur Hyderabad Motorway (M-6) Project that the length of this section is 306 Km and width is 100meters.

He said that we have to purchase 6,534 acres of land for this project.

He said that there are six districts, 17 Tehsils and 119 villages that fall in the alignment of the project.

He said that 85 percent agriculture land fall in the alignment of the project.

The committee chairman and its members expressed their serious concern over it, and said the people are suffering for many years due imposition of section 4.

They said that the people neither can sell their land nor construct any building on their land due to imposition of section 4.

They said that immediate payment should be made to the people after applying section 4. The committee also sought a comprehensive report of this issue within a month.