Ghulam Mursalin Marwat
LAKKI MARWAT: The citizen network for budget accountability (CNBA) has expressed its disappointment over budget making process at district level in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as the entire process lacked people’ participation and transparency.
This was revealed by CDO program officer Inayatullah Khan and CPDI senior program manager Raja Shoaib Akbar during a session on Friday. The session arranged by community development organization with the support of centre for peace and development initiative at council hall in the neighboring Tank district was attended by people from different walks of life.
The participants shared their views about budget making and said that public participation would help to make budget people friendly. They urged the authorities concerned to conduct pre budget consultative sessions at the grass roots level to provide people with opportunities to give their inputs and suggestions for budget making.
Inayatullah said that local governments failed to ensure public participation in budget making process besides the district governments did not release any pre budget statements for the information of general public. “In many districts the authorities concerned did not bother to hold pre budget consultation with people from different segments of society”, he maintained, claiming that in some districts where pre budget sessions were held the authorities preferred officials of government departments on people from different walks of life.
Referring to survey conducted by CPDI he said that in around eight districts the budget call letters were issued up to Nov 15, 2016 while the authorities concerned in rest of the districts could not release call letters up to March 31, 2017. The bigwigs of local governments in only eight districts could pass the budget from respective councils before the end of fiscal years”, he revealed. The CDO program officer said that the performance of district governments with regard to ensuring transparency in budget making process was not satisfactory as they did not take any practical steps to enable the citizens to have an easy access to the budget through modern means of information technology.
He informed the participants that the websites of district governments in only five districts were functional while the posts of district planning officers in 11 districts and over hundred posts of subordinate officials linked with budget related matters were vacant, hindering the process of budget making of local governments. Declaring budget an important document he said that the government should ensure taking people’s inputs in formulation of policies. “In districts the budget of local governments is passed silently without providing people opportunities to discuss its merits and demerits”, he added, saying that public participation in budget making process is helpful for implementing the development based agenda at grass roots level.
