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Tuesday March 19, 2024

No funds for new province in Punjab budget

By Jawwad Rizvi
October 22, 2018

LAHORE: No funds have been allocated for creating South Punjab in the The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government's maiden budget of Punjab.

The party had promised the creation of the South Punjab province on administrative grounds in the agenda given by it in its election manifesto and the first 100-day plan after coming into the power. However, no allocation was found in a detailed study of the budget documents. Further, no such plan was reflected in the medium-term budgetary framework which forecasts the future priorities of the government.

When Punjab Finance Minister Makhdoom Jawan Bakht Hashim, brother of President Junoobi Punjab Suba Mahaz (JPSM) Khusro Bakhtiar, was asked about the allocation of resources for creating the South Punjab province in the post-budget press conference, he said one could find that one-third of the total development budget was allocated for the uplift of South Punjab.

Hashim said the administrative capacity of the public offices located in South Punjab was very low, which needed to be improved first before the creation of the new province. He said that a number of head offices of administrative departments had been established in Lahore and the heads of these departments visited South Punjab occasionally.

“We need to first relocate them to South Punjab and do the capacity building of the government human resource working in South Punjab,” he said, adding that it’s long way to go. Additionally, Jawan Bakht Hashim said the PTI government was focusing on a better local government system making the elected representatives more accountable and accessible to locals.

However, against the claim, the budget documents revealed that the development allocations to local governments had reduced while the current expenditure was increased due to 15 per cent increase in salary and pension. Further, no funds were earmarked for the local body elections which would need almost Rs 5 billion if the PTI government succeeded in dissolving the existing local government system.

According to Hashim, the government has been working to dissolve the existing local government system and bring a new system in which powers would be actually passed to village councils and local people.

Contrary to this, an official of the Local Government Department of Punjab, privy to all developments, said the PTI leadership was unclear about law amendments needed to introduce the new system. Quoting the example of the village council model of KP, the official mentioned that the average population size of a village in Punjab was around 25,000 while in KP, it was 3,000 to 5000. Thus, this model could not work here. Further, some of the top PTI leaders in Punjab are supporting reinforcement of the City District Government System given by Musharraf with some changes including the KP model. However, the official believed that it seemed to be impossible for the PTI government to dissolve the existing local government system in near future. Thus, no allocation was made for new local government elections and creation of new administrative offices.

According to the white paper published by the Punjab government, the local government system is being reviewed and a reformed system will be soon unveiled, therefore the finance chapter was taken out from the budget documents.

An official of the Finance Department said no funds were allocated for the South Punjab province and local government elections during the ongoing financial year. However, he said if the local government elections were the first priority of the government, there would not be any difficulty to create a fiscal space of Rs 4 to 5 billion for conducting new elections. This fund would be approved through supplementary grants in the next financial year budget, he added.

In the past, the local government legislation was passed in 2013 while elections were held in 2015 and local governments came into power in January 2017 as Account-IV was closed in December 2016. Thus, wrapping up of the existing local government system would not be an easy task for the PTI government as the existing elected representatives could approach courts. Besides, it would also be difficult for the PTI to pass legislation on the new system from the Punjab Assembly with the existing party position. Similarly, passing the new province legislation in the National Assembly would be an uphill task at a time when Khusro Bakhtiar is enjoying the federal Ministry of Planning, Development and Reforms and his younger brother Makhdoom Jawan Bakht Hashim the Finance Ministry in Punjab.

On no allocation of funds for the new province, the adviser to Chief Minister Usman Buzdar who also hails from South Punjab, Dr Shahbaz Gill, said a committee for the creation of the new province on administrative grounds had been formed. The members of the committee would be notified soon. Justifying no allocations of resources for the new province, he argued that the resources required for this purpose would be generated through supplementary grants. He said Punjab presented a Rs 148 billion surplus budget, so it had resources whenever required for any project.