A farewell meeting of the caretaker provincial cabinet was held here at Civil Secretariat, Peshawar on Thursday with caretaker Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Justice (R) Syed ArshadHussain Shah in the chair. Besides provincial cabinet members, Chief Secretary, IGP and administrative secretaries of the provincial departments attended the meeting. The participants of the meeting, on the occasion, offered Fatiha for the former caretaker chief minister of the province Late Muhammad Azam Khan, paying rich tribute to his services for the province.
Addressing the participants, caretaker Chief Minister Justice (R) Syed ArshadHussain Shah extended his heartfelt felicitations to all of them for peaceful conduct of general elections in the province and paid tribute to civil administration, Pak Army and all other stakeholders for providing peaceful environment for that purpose. “We all are grateful to Allah the Almighty for completing such an important constitutional responsibility”, he stated.
Touching upon the performance of his caretaker government in the province, Syed Arshad Hussain Shah said when he took over the government, the province was faced with two crucial challenges; Law and order and economic crisis. However, thanks to excellent teamwork, we have overcome those challenges to a great extent, the chief minister remarked and said that when they took charge, there were no funds even to pay salaries to the employees; the provincial government took every possible step in order to steer the province out of that situation.
“We strongly raised our voice to get the arrears of the province due to the federal government, and succeeded in getting an additional amount of Rs. 64 billion in a short span of time”, he said and added that even now, round about hundred billion rupees still in the provincial treasury. Speaking about the priorities of his caretaker set up, the chief minister said that despite the difficult fiscal condition.
