Mansehra nazim threatens sit-in outside K-P Assembly

The district nazim warned that if the provincial government did not or grant them their powers he stage a sit-in

MANSEHRA: Mansehra’s District Nazim Sardar Said Ghulam on Saturday threatened to stage a sit-in outside the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa assembly if the decision of cutting the Provincial Finance Commission (PFC) award by half was not reversed.

Ghulam announced this at a news conference in Mansehra on Saturday where he was accompanied by several of members of the district council.

The Nazim said that the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had been making tall claims through newspaper ads about empowering the district government and disbursing funds worth billions to them.

“The reality is that the provincial government has been misleading the people of K-P and the entire nation since they have failed to fulfil their promises,” he said, adding neither had the provincial government given them powers, nor had they provided them their entitled funds.

Ghulam said that in fiscal year 2015-16, the K-P government had announced Rs420 million for Mansehra from the PFC award, however, it only released half of that amount, or just Rs210 million.

Similarly in 2016-17, the government had allocated Rs510 million for his district under the PFC award but only disbursed Rs220 million.

The district nazim warned that if the provincial government did not release the funds or grant them their powers, he along with other nazims and members of district governments from across K-P would stage a sit-in outside the K-P assembly soon.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 25^th, 2016.