KMC to present budget on June 29

Mayor decries lack of development funds, new uplift schemes

KARACHI: Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar said on Tuesday revealed that he would announce the budget for the next fiscal year on June 29 after taking approval from the council.

He announced this while addressing a session organised to finalise budget documents, where he said that no new development work would take place in Karachi in the fiscal year 2020-21 as the Sindh government had not approved any development projects proposed by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC).

"The city is already facing problems and the absence of development schemes will only add to these problems in the next fiscal year," said Akhtar, adding that they had tried their best to get development schemes prioritised in the budget, which were directly related to the common interest of people.

He said that he had tried to balance developmental and non-developmental expenses, while, in the budget for 2010-21, the latter had been reduced to allocate more funds to the developmental schemes.

Akhtar claimed that only one-fourth of the annual developmental budget was received by the KMC in the current fiscal year due to which several projects were left incomplete, adding that funds to complete those projects had been reserved in the budget of the next fiscal year.

Expressing his concerns over the expected reduction in local government funds, Karachi mayor maintained that they had already been facing multiple challenges due to insufficient funds and it would be tougher for the administration to pay employees' salaries and pensions.

He said that the issues of the local government bodies should be taken seriously and resolved by issuing the required funds.

He also said that the National Disaster Management Authority and Pakistan Meteorological Department had repeatedly warned of heavy showers this year and there was a chance of urban flooding, but neither did the Sindh government clean rainwater drains, nor did it issue funds for the KMC to do so.

"KMC cannot afford to carry out the process of cleaning rainwater drains using its [available] resources, therefore, the Sindh government needs to issue funds for it immediately," he stressed.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 24^th, 2020.