Saturday, May 31, 2008, Jamadi-ul-Awwal 24, 1429    

SAFRON emphasised to double grants for FATA uplift

Peshawar— Senate Standing Committee emphasized for doubling allocation of funds to speed up the pace of socio-economic in FATA.

These remarks were made by Eng. Rasshed Khan, Chairman of the Senate Standing committee on SAFRON while presiding a high level meeting at FATA Secretariat.

Federal Minister for SAFRON Najamudin Khan was also present on the occasion. Senator, Nasir Khan, Senator Haji Muhammad Adeel, Senators Anisa Zeb, Senator Abdul Ghaffar Qureshi, Senator Muhammad Saleh Shah, Members National Assembly Shaukat Ullah and Kamran Khan, Additional Chief Secretary FATA and high-ranking government officials were also present on the occasion.

Chairman of the committee said that FATA needs special treatment in the development strategies to integrate it with the development parts of the country. He said the dream of mainstreaming FATA would remain illusive until the fund allocation for uplift schemes is doubled. He said that the current amount of allocation of ADP is 7.5 billion, which is not sufficient to meet the requirements of FATA.

He said that 80 per cent of the funds in the current ADP have to be spend on the completion of the ongoing schemes and a mega chunk of funds of 20 per cent is allocated for new sachems.

The Chairman Standing Committee proposed that the size of the ADP may be enlarged to 15 billion rupees so that the new schemes could get the required amount of financial resources for completion on time.

The law and order situation is hindering the implementation of mega projects in far-flung areas of the FATA and the remove the prevailing bottlenecks, the Senate would hold separate meetings with different departments and decisions made after consultations would be implemented accordingly.

He said to streamline the implementation process; the Senate Committee would work like a bridge between the FATA Secretariat and SEPRON so that the planning and execution of the development projects is done within the stipulated time.

Senator Haji Adeel said that monitoring mechanism should be put in place to ensure the judicious utilization of the resources on development schemes. —APP