PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Finance Minister Taimur Khan Jhagra Friday declared in unequivocal term that KP government would ensure protection of the rights and shares of the province as enshrined in the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, vowed not to budge a single inch from its position on the rights of the province and the merged areas.
The timeline of the present NFC award is up to June 2020, he said adding the new award should have been formulated by now, however till the time the present award would continue to be followed.
Responding to the points raised by the opposition members during speeches on the budget 2019-20 in the provincial assembly that resumed discussion on budget today, the Finance Minister said that Budget 2019-20 is historic in nature as it contained the name of AGN Kazi, who drafted the mode of payment of Net Hydel Profit to the province.
The Finance Minister informed that from next year we will be present paperless budget putting in on the net. The Minister clarified that the government would not hide anything from the house with regard budgetary allocations.
He assured the house that not a single penny allocated for the merged areas would be utilized outside the domain of the merged areas. He clarified that Rs66bn were proposed by the Sartaj Aziz led committee for the development of the merged areas for a period of three years while we allocated Rs82 billion development program per annum for the erstwhile Fata.
He further clarified that the previous regimes have to put additional US dollars 2 to 3 billion in the national economy in a bid to avoid devaluation of the currency which he maintained adversely affected the poor segment of the society.
He held all the previous governments responsible for the present deteriorating education standard in the province adding focus was made on construction of the schools buildings but not on improving education standard.
We have to seriously ponder over provision of quality education to five million children in the province he said that we have planned to recruit 21 teachers to overcome their shortages in the schools. The KP Government he claimed takes the lead in initiating the first ever civil servant reforms.
The Finance Minister maintained that we have to work for the people of the entire province and not for the government servants alone. He clarified that the tax on ‘Naswar’ (snuff) was levied by the PPP in 1990 therefore we should not be targeted for it. He further told the house that there was no facility of universal health insurance in a country like USA whereas we have introduced the same in the KP in the budget 2019-20.
Parliamentary leader of MMA and former KP LG Minister Inayatullah Khan contended that the KP budget 2019-20 is deficit budget of Rs200 billion. He informed that house that the KP Government failed to get Rs45billion share of net hydel profit of the province in the outgoing fiscal 2018-19. He asked the government to clarify their position on new NFC award.
The previous PTI Government led by Pervez Khattak, he recalled used to frequent protest demonstrations against nonpayment of the hydel profit by the federal government which are nonexistent today.
He feared that fifty thousand people to lose job opportunities in the coming four years due to increase
in upper limit of the retirement age of the government employees. Maximum allocations made for the construction of roads despite that fact that over 1.8 million children are out of the schools in the province, he added.
Earlier, the house also offered Fateha for the departed soul of the wife of special assistant to KP CM Kamran Bangash who breathed her last few days back.
The chair put off the proceedings of the house till Saturday morning at 10:30am.
