In K-P, funds for women support centres remain unutilised

Scheme aimed at curbing violence against women

PESHAWAR: Set up to offer help to women and to curb gender-based violence, the provincial government has failed to fully activate these centres and now they are in danger of seeing their allocated budget lapse at the end of the current fiscal year.

Documents available with The Express Tribune state that the incumbent Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led government has allocated around Rs2 million for the establishment of these Bol centres to provide free legal help and other means to curb the violence against women in the province and provide a safe working and home environment.

The government had allocated money to establish a centre in the provincial capital in the first instance and then expand its scope to Funds for women support centres remain unutilisedother districts of the province as well.

But on the ground, no such facilities were created, nor was its budget ever utilized. With the next fiscal year around the corner, its budget is in danger of lapsing.

The government on Sunday approved the second budget paper worth Rs657 billion for the next fiscal year.

Centralised enlistment system for companies

The provincial government has planned to establish a centralized system for enlisting companies in the local government and other engineering departments.

To ease the registration and enlistment mechanism for all concerned departments, this facility will be available at one place by establishing an online portal.

In this regard, a meeting was held in Peshawar on Tuesday with the Special Assistant to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Chief Minister on Science and Technology and Information Technology Kamran Banghash in the chair.

During the meeting, it was disclosed that the proposed online portal will allow the enlistment of construction companies for various departments through a centralized system.

This system will also be used for E-biding on contracts and required procedures.

It was stated that after centralization of various departments in one place, individual revenue will not be affected and it would be delivered to concerned departments.

The proposed facility would also be provided through the Citizens Facilitation Centers (CFCs) of the IT department.

During the meeting, Bangash said that the effort will also be fruitful for improving the ease-of-doing-business in the province apart from providing actual statistics on the business opportunities provided by the government to various construction companies as will employment of manpower.

He directed that a joint meeting, comprising the Communications and Works secretary, Local Government departments as well as senior officials of the K-P Information Technology Board, K-P Procurement Regulatory Authority (K-PPRA) and the Performance Management and Reforms Unit (PMRU) may be convened so as to further accelerate the matter.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 29^th, 2019.