PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government scheme to disburse Rs10,000 monthly honorarium from the next fiscal would benefit around 22,000 prayer leaders in the province.
An official communication said the KP government would spend an amount of approximately Rs23 million per month and Rs2.5 billion per annum on the scheme which was approved in a meeting of the Auqaf Department recently.
Chief Minister Mahmood Khan had chaired the meeting which was attended by Finance Minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra, Special Assistant to Chief Minister on Auqaf, Hajj and Religious Affairs, Zahoor Shakir, Auqaf and Religious Affairs Secretary, Shahid Sohail, and other relevant senior officials.
The participants of the meeting discussed the progress made so far on the grant of honorarium to prayer leaders.
They were told that data of all the prayer leaders in settled districts of the province had been collected for grant of honorarium through district administrations.
It was added that the department concerned did not have the exact data of mosques and prayer leaders in the merged districts.
The assistant commissioners, hence, were named deputy administrators of Auqaf Department for maintaining data of prayer leaders and disbursement of honorarium.
The chief minister directed the senior officials to expedite work on data collection of prayer leaders in the merged districts and complete all arrangements to provide honorarium to them across the province.
The participants were also briefed about the reforms being introduced in the department to strengthen it along the modern lines and the proposed business plan to ensure better utilisation of the commercial properties of Auqaf across the province.
It was decided, in principle, to ban further extension in the lease period of commercial properties of the department to revise their rents and bring them on a par with the market rates.
It was argued that a review of the rents of these properties would increase the revenue for the government.
