Councillors warn to lock-down Peshawar

Provincial chief Sajid Iqbal Mohmand claims provincial government has yet to release developmental funds

PESHAWAR: A body of local government mayors has threatened to shut down the provincial capital unless development funds for village councils are released within 10 days. In a news conference at the Peshawar Press Club on Friday, held by nazims and local government councilors — under the banner of the Nazim Councilor Ittihad, a body representing Nazim of local government across the province —their provincial chief Sajid Iqbal Mohmand claimed that the provincial government has yet to release developmental funds for village councils during the ongoing fiscal year 2017-18. All this even as the provincial government starts preparing for the next fiscal year. Mohmand, accompanied by Nazims from southern districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, criticised the K-P government’s policy under which it has stopped the release of funds for those councils which have failed to spend at least 60 per cent of the funds already released to them. “The government does not release funds for a village council which has failed to spend 60 per cent of the funds already released,” Mohmand said, adding that this policy was not acceptable.  

Published in The Express Tribune, March 17^th, 2018.