Citizen budget for Peshawar unveiled

PESHAWAR: The Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) has presented the first-ever citizen budget for the Peshawar district with support of the Safar Welfare Organisation.

Speaking at a function, arranged on the occasion, Jamshed Tariq, CPDI Project Coordinator for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said it was for the first time that citizen budget had been developed at the district level.

He said the citizen budget had been developed in jargon-free and easy-to-understand format. The CPDI representative said the purpose of producing this document was to share with citizens the salient features of budget in education, health and water and sanitation sectors in the Peshawar district.

For the year 2017-2018, a total development share coming from provincial and district budget for education sector of Peshawar district has been put at Rs704,825,000. It is 1.2 per cent of the total development budget.

The health sector development has grabbed 5.7 per cent share of the total development allocation, equaling Rs3437,534,000.

The water supply and sanitation has a share of Rs249,306,000 which is 1.5 per cent of total development allocations for the Peshawar district. Salman Muhammad Shoaib, Program Coordinator, Safar Welfare Organisation, said through this information, citizens of district Peshawar could keep an eye on budget allocations and its subsequent spending.

“Resultantly, they would be in a better position next year to put forward recommendations for development schemes as per their needs. This will also help promote the culture of information sharing and budget accountability,” he pointed out.

The programme coordinator said the citizen budget was developed under the project “Democratic Local Governance for Development in Pakistan” which is being funded by European Union and Friedrich Nauman Foundation for Freedom Pakistan.

The CPDI is an independent, non-partisan and a not-for-profit registered civil society organisation working on the issues of development and peace in Pakistan.