Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Friday passed all supplementary grants for financial year 2016-17 unanimously and no vote was held on any cut motion.
Supplementary budget of Rs 47.25 billion for the outgoing financial year was presented in the house by Provincial Minister for Finance Muzaffar Said.
A total of 53 demands for the grants of supplementary budget were presented and adopted by the house one by one. The highest supplementary grant was approved under the head of construction of roads, highways and bridges, which was Rs 15.949 billion followed by a supplementary grant of Rs 7.202 billion for payment of pensions.
Similarly, a supplementary grant of Rs 6.148 billion for the financial year 2016-17 was approved for expenditure in health sector and grant of Rs 2.922 billion for police.
Though the members have submitted cut motions on all supplementary grants and some of them were moved in the house, but later were withdrawn after getting assurance from the ministers concerned.
The longest debate was witnessed on the supplementary grant for higher education, archives and libraries. ANP parliamentary leader Sardar Hussain Babak while giving arguments in favour of his cut motion said that previous provincial ANP-PPP coalition government had established 9 universities and several campuses in various parts of the province and asked the PTI government to prove their better performance than their predecessors.
Responding to the points raised by the ANP legislator, Advisor to CM for Higher Education Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani told the house that when he assumed power, there were only 180 colleges and 20 management sciences colleges in the province but by the next year they will become 300.
He said that the provincial government besides, elementary and secondary education was also concentrating on the promotion of higher education and has established separate women universities in Mardan and Charsadda while technical university was also being established in Nowshera.
In response to the proposal of the establishment of the board of governors on the pattern of schools, the advisor said that the provincial government was working on the formation of college council. He said that for the encouragement of the college principals, the government has approved an allowance of Rs 25000 to Rs 50000 for them.
He said that the department was constituting quality insurance units in colleges and providing funds for them and after June such units would be established in more colleges.
Regarding the introduction of BS Programme in colleges, the advisor said that initially it was started in 36 colleges, but next year it was extended to 100 colleges and then would be extended to 200 colleges of the province. He said that according to Higher Education Commission (HEC), the existing BA/BSc programme would be fizzled out from colleges.
