Despite rendering matchless sacrifices in war against terrorism, welfare of FATA people is still not the priority of the government, as Population Welfare Programme FATA has only received 28 per cent of the total allocated budget in PC-1 (2012-15), reveals documents.
According to the documents available with Pakistan Today, only 28 per cent of the total cost of the PC-1 has been provided to the Program during the last three financial years.
The documents showed that the budget was not provided as approved by PC-1 during the past three years, as Rs. 206.077 million has been released against the total Rs. 706.047 million approved by PC-1 during the period.
The Population Welfare Program (PWP), which was extended to Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in 1993 as a separate wing in the Directorate of Population Welfare, is mandated to provide Family Planning, Reproductive Health and General Ailments Services throughout FATA.
In October 2004, the program was formally shifted to FATA Secretariat and its separate Directorate was established in FATA Secretariat.
However, none of the set target has been achieved under the program mainly due to insufficient budget released during this time.
Year-wise details show that Rs. 202.344 million has been approved as per PC-1 (2012-13) of which only Rs. 48.395 million has been released, while out of the total approved Rs. 232.897 million (2013-14) only Rs.78.841 million has been released.
Similarly, the data shows that during the financial year (2014-15), a total of Rs.270.806 million has been approved as per PC-1 of which only Rs. 78.841 million has been released.
According to the documents, under the program it was planned to establish 60 Family Welfare Centre (FWCs), two Reproductive Health Service Centre-A (RHSC-A), three Mobile Service Units (MSU), recruiting 60 Social Mobilizer Male (SMM) and 90 Social Mobilzer Females (SMF) during said period.
However, the data shows that not even a single FWC and RHSC was established or any recruitment has been made during this period, due to the amount of the budget released which was insufficient along with the precarious security situation and on-going military operations in the area.
