Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak has asked implementers for ensuring efficient and in time utilisation of the allocated funds and to avoid delay in initiating work on development schemes.
This he said while presiding over midyear review of ADP 2015-16 at Civil Secretariat Peshawar on Wednesday morning. Provincial ministers and administrative secretaries for various departments of the province attended the meeting.
The meeting apart from discussing funds allocated for various developmental schemes also reviewed pace of work on uplift projects. A number of directives were issued on the occasion to speed up work on developmental projects in the province.
Additional Chief Secretary Azam Khan and Secretary for P&D Zafar Ali Shah briefed the meeting about annual development program. Secretary P&D informed the meeting that scope of the current ADP was Rs. 175 billion out of which Rs. 75.9 billion had been released till December last year while Rs. 48.6 billion were incurred on various uplift schemes in the period.
He elaborated that 1,553 schemes were included in the ADP 2015-16 out of which 915 were ongoing while the rest were new schemes. He told the meeting that response to monitoring and evaluation reports were recorded as 50%.
The secretary P&D added that meetings at different level had been arranged to ensure utilization of funds allocated for developmental schemes. Referring to causes of low utilization, he said that delay in submission of PC-1, identification of sites and releases of funds were deterring implementation process.
Similarly he said that difficulty in selection of consultants in remote areas, prolonged procedure of procurement, frequent changes of sites, weak implementation by the executing departments etc were making pace of developmental schemes as slow. He suggested speeding up of project implementation process at secretaries’ level and holding up of monthly review meetings to gear up work on uplift schemes.
The meeting fixed 55% target for the 3rd quarter while March 15th was declared as cut-off date for surrendering unutilized funds. Speaking on the occasion, the CM KP said that delegation of developmental funds to the districts level would not hamper the process of development.
He hoped that district government would utilize their allocated funds till the end of current financial year. He declared that additional funds would not be provided to the financially weak TMAs rather he said that such TMAs had been authorized to adjust their expenditures out of their allocated funds. Taking note of the secretary for Information Abid Majeed’s request, the CM ordered heads of the departments to convey their achievements to the information department immediately to circulate it for the information of general public.
The CM directed heads of the executing agencies that instead of wasting time in the revision of the schemes, they should initiate work on the project within the allocation funds and continue their efforts for additional funds also. The CM ordered to convene review meeting soon to discuss developmental schemes in detail.