PESHAWAR: Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) was allocated a budget of Rs24.5 billion in the fiscal year 2017-18 but if the allocated sum is not utilised quickly, Rs10 billion will be lost, according to a report by a private media outlet.
The bureaucrats at the FATA Secretariat in Islamabad have been slow to use their budget of Rs24.5 billion and have not done the paperwork in time for the posting of 5,500 education and health staff, who are sorely needed in a place that has rudimentary schools and hospitals.
Despite the desperate need for uplift work in FATA, the bureaucrats have not asked for a single rupee more than what it was given for FY 2017-18. As a result, FATA will get the same budget as it did last year: a paltry 24.5 billion rupees.
Similarly, the bureaucrats in the FATA Secretariat haven’t even bothered with managing ongoing schemes. One such scheme is the widening of the 45 km Ghalanai Mohmand Ghat Road. The road costs 3.7 billion rupees and the funding was given the green signal by the federal government on February 7, 2018. The FWO was given the job and it spent almost two billion rupees in advance.
In the budget for the fiscal year that is ending in June, the only new project for FATA was the Rs5 billion Nawaz Sharif Model Town in North Waziristan Agency. However, the federal government has deleted the scheme from the PSDP document that was tabled in the budget for debate in parliament.
The same happened with the Bosaq Hydropower project for Bajaur, which was supposed to be allocated Rs5 billion, but actually got just Rs500 million.
