Punjab gets lion’s share of MPs’ budget

Balochistan and K-P given less funds than Islamabad alone

ISLAMABAD:

More than half of the annual development budget reserved for parliamentarians has been diverted to Punjab, with Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa getting even less funds than Islamabad alone.

The federal government diverted Rs10.4 billion – almost 55% – of the Rs19 billion disbursements to the most populous province of the country, according to details submitted by the cabinet division to the Senate Standing Committee on Planning and Development on Tuesday.



Compared to this, the most neglected, under-developed province of Balochistan received Rs445 million or just 2.3% of the released funds. Similarly, K-P got Rs480 million or 2.5% of the total allocation for lawmakers.

On the other hand, the Islamabad Capital Territory, which houses less than two million people and has two seats in the National Assembly, received Rs700 million or 3.7% of the funds disbursed. The combined receipts of K-P and Balochistan stand at 4.8% of the funds.

This has once again highlighted regional disparities in development in addition to the tilt of the PML-N government towards Punjab.

Out of the Rs20-billion annual allocation, a steering committee of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Community Development Programme – the new name for parliamentarians’ schemes, an amount of Rs19 billion has been handed over to the provinces and federal ministries, said Sheikh Aftab Ahmed, the minister of state for parliamentary affairs.



Ahmed is also the chairman of the steering committee which oversees these MNAs schemes. There are only two other political nominees on the steering committee, Capt (retd) Mohammad Safdar – the prime minister’s son-in-law – and Senator Saud Majeed – another trustworthy lieutenant of the premier. The country’s second most-populated province, Sindh received Rs790 million or 4.2% of the total funds.

After the Supreme Court of Pakistan banned PM’s discretionary spending, the federal government has come up with an innovative way of financing schemes in the constituencies of the lawmakers. It is now implementing the MDGs programme through bureaucracy.

Ahmed claimed the MNAs were not directly getting the funding – an assertion strongly rebutted by Senator Mohsin Laghari and Senator Saifullah Magsi, whose relatives are also members of the lower house of parliament.

The federal government also disbursed Rs1.1 billion to the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) administrations.

The housing and works ministry received Rs2.6 billion, the water and power ministry Rs685 million and the petroleum and natural resources ministry got Rs1.9 billion. The cabinet division did not give the provincial break-up of the funds handed over to these three federal ministries.



However, insiders said most of the Rs5.2 billion given to these three federal ministries were allocated for schemes in Punjab.  The senators have opposed the decision to give funds to the federal ministries and instead suggested the entire budget be handed over to the local governments.

In December 2014, the prime minister had approved the MNAs programme to finance small-scale schemes. Since then the government has given Rs32.5 billion for these schemes. Work on 3,083 small-scale schemes has begun with 2,129 of them in Punjab.

Since December 2014, 243 out of the 2,129 schemes launched in Punjab have already been completed. Sindh began working on 492 schemes and completed 298. No project in K-P has been completed while work on only four could begin. Work on 88 schemes was started in Balochistan but none of them could be completed in the past 15 months. In FATA, work on 276 schemes began while none was completed. Compared to this, Islamabad started work on 94 schemes and completed 24 in this period.



Published in The Express Tribune, March 16^th, 2016.