Govt fails to disburse Rs7.95bn for development of tribal districts in outgoing fiscal year

The federal government has failed to disburse as much as Rs7.95 billion allocated for development of the tribal districts in the outgoing year’s budget.

Following the merger of tribal districts with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), the federal government created the Merged Areas Annual Development Programme (ADP) along with the Accelerated Integrated Program (AIP) under which the federal government directed the KP government to implement ongoing development projects in the tribal districts.

The federal government had promised to provide Rs24 billion for this year's development program but released only 67 per cent (Rs16.4 billion) of the committed amount for merged districts in the development programme. The remaining Rs7.95 billion is yet to be released.

According to sources in the planning department, several letters have been written to the federal government asking for the release of the allocated funds to complete the ongoing development projects in tribal districts. However, some of the officials said that the federal government is planning to reduce the allocated funds.

Because of the non-availability of funds, most of the projects in the merged districts are incomplete. Sources said that five development programmes had been started in the tribal districts for which not a single penny had been released so far.

They said that the Rs10 billion development programme for the districts, a rapid development programme, and other development projects were also underway in the tribal districts under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP).

The planning department said that the federal government had allocated Rs3.7 billion to attract female students to school in the tribal districts, but no fund were released for the project this year. Sources said that under the scheme, female students with a 70 per cent attendance were to be provided monthly stipends but no funds were released for the project by the federal government.

The officials said that since schools were closed due to Covid-19 lockdowns, the Rs3.7 billion were not released.