At loggerheads: LG funds untouched as P&D, finance battle over senior staff

Planning dept says BS-19 officials needed to help councillors navigate development schemes

PESHAWAR:

Development funds at the local government (LG) level remain gridlocked as the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa finance and planning and development (P&D) departments continue to be at loggerheads. As P&D department demands more trained and senior officials for the districts to handle development, the finance department insists the former stick to its old structure.

As a result, even 10 months after the LG elections—which resulted in earmarking 30% of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) for the districts—elected representatives have not been able to use said funds in their respective districts, towns/tehsils and villages.

Looking back

The finance department released Rs15.22 billion for 26 districts of K-P out of Rs30.27 billion allocated for the districts. But only Rs54.61 million has been utilised by Nowshera—the chief minister’s hometown—as of March 2016. The remaining 25 districts, including the provincial capital, have zero utilisation of the allotted funds.

The government allocated Rs8.5 billion to the district tier, Rs8.5 billion for the town/tehsil tier and Rs13.1 billion for village/neighbourhood tier. Though nearly half of the total allocations have been released and transferred to the accounts of the districts, data received from relevant departments shows zero utilisation at town/tehsil level as well as village/neighbourhood level.

A tussle over BS-19

Officials dealing with the subject said the P&D set-up in the districts under the LG Ordinance (LGO) 2001 was abolished under the LG Act 2012, while that of the finance department remained intact.

“Some officials were accommodated in the provincial P&D department, while some went to other departments. 13 surplus officials are still working in the districts,” said a senior official of P&D, requesting anonymity.

The finance department opposed the P&D Statement of New Expenditure (SNE) for creating posts under the LG Act 2013.

Under P&D guidelines for local bodies, there should be a district planning officer (BS-19), a deputy district planning officer (BS-18), a planning officer (BS-17) and a technical officer (BS-17) at each district along with 7 statistical officers (BS-17) at divisional districts and support staff. The finance department is objecting to the demand of grade-19 post for the district officer planning slot and the matter is yet to be resolved.

Sources privy to the matter said Chief Minister Pervez Khattak in the mid-year ADP review meeting on March 2, turned down the creation of new posts for the P&D set-up at district level. “The chief minister said no new posts were to be created and P&D department’s old set-up for districts was to be activated,” a senior bureaucrat who was present at the meeting told The Express Tribune.

“The P&D is trying to put its own officials at grade-19,” said a senior official of the finance department, requesting anonymity. The official was of the opinion P&D should make its former set-up functional which was working under the 2001 act, instead of creating new posts.

More schemes, more people

When asked about the previous set-up, one P&D official said, “That was abolished when the LG Act 2012 was implemented and the chief minister has not been informed about it.”

P&D officials said the finance department set-up was present to some extent.

One of the officials further explained, “Last year, the districts had only Rs1.6 billion for district ADP, now the amount has reached Rs50 billion with the addition of the CM discretionary funds and MPA schemes under the District Development Advisory Committee.” He added if a single district in last year’s set-up had 100 schemes, it will now have more than 1,000 schemes because of the massive allocation.

Possible repercussions

“You need a strong and trained P&D structure to make, approve, process and monitor the schemes in the districts, “ the  P&D official added. “The newly elected representatives have no skills to do this and the deputy commissioner has no time for it; if the government does not take the issue seriously, funds will remain unutilised,” he said.

“The money is not lapsable and will not return to the finance department’s kitty. Unlike provincial development funds, these will stay in the districts’ accounts under the rules but remain unused,” he said. “No services will be delivered and this will be a great failure of provincial and district governments.”

The official said secretaries appointed for villages and neighbourhood councils are also incapable of following procedures defined under P&D guidelines for the utilisation of development funds and execution of schemes. “They don’t even know the process from PC-1 to PC-5,” he said.

Local Government, Elections and Rural Development Director General Adil Siddique said, “This is the duty of the respective districts and we cannot dictate everything to them.” He said they had given them the rules of business and it was their job to utilise the money efficiently.

Regarding the gridlock between P&D and finance departments, the DG said he was not in a position to comment on it.

Finance department secretary Ali Raza Bhutta could not be reached for comments.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 10^th, 2016.