Peanuts for NACTA this year too

Watchdog gets Rs170m as against a demand of Rs1.4b

ISLAMABAD: Contrary to the claims of waging a successful war against terrorism, the government has once again overlooked the National Counter Terrorism Authority (Nacta) in its budgetary allocations for the fiscal year 2018-19.

The defence budget was increased by 20% as the federal budget for FY2018-19 was announced last Friday, but the government failed to strengthen the country’s defence against terrorism by ignoring Nacta in its budgetary proposals.

The budget proposed for Nacta stood at Rs170 million while it had demanded additional budget amounting to Rs1.406 billion for the next fiscal year. The employees-related expenses in the proposed budget for the authority alone stood at Rs109 million.

This is not for the first time that Nacta was given peanuts in the federal budget as the government had allocated a total of Rs143 million in the budget 2017-18 for Nacta while it had revised its budgetary allocation of Rs1.559 billion in the fiscal year 2016-17.

The opposition as well as experts have been criticising the government for not making Nacta fully functional. Nacta is responsible for making policies and strategies to counter terrorism in the country which has been badly hindering the country for the past many years in many areas.

Nacta was made functional again in the wake of the Army Public School (APS) attack in 2014 in Peshawar.



As the premier security watchdog, Nacta is also responsible for implementing most of the points of the 20-point declaration of the National Action Plan (NAP) and delineate counter terrorism policies. In fact, the fourth point of NAP solely calls for strengthening Nacta.

Formation of a joint intelligence directorate (JID) which would provide a joint platform for intelligence sharing for all security agencies, including ISI, has been the prime requirement of the counter terrorism authority.

According to the authorities concerned, the idea of forming a JID under the single roof is about to be materialised. However, so little budgetary specification for it may pose a hurdle to smooth materialisation of the job.

According to sources in the relevant quarters, the federal government has been downplaying the role of Nacta when it comes to placing right budget allocations for it to cover all of its expenses.



However, contrary to its small allocation, sources in Nacta are hopeful that it would get Rs1.5 billion budget which it had actually proposed.