Centre slashes allocations for tribal districts by Rs21 billion, complains KP.

PESHAWAR -- The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Saturday complained that the centre had slashed its annual allocations for the province's tribal districts by Rs21 billion in the next fiscal.

Addressing a news conference at the Civil Secretariat here, provincial finance minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra said for the first time since the merger of Fata with KP, the tribal region would receive fewer funds from the centre compared with the previous year's.

He said the tribal districts' allocations in the current fiscal totalled Rs131 billion but they had been reduced to Rs110 billion in the next.

Mr Jhagra said the 2021-22 federal budget had Rs60 billion for tribal districts as current expenditure,Rs17 billion for the rehabilitation of internally displaced persons and Rs54 billion for the region's development.

Minister warns funding cut will badly impact uplift

He said the next federal budget had zero funding for the rehabilitation of IDPs, while development budget was reduced to Rs50 billion.

The minister said ex-Fata's allocations for current expenditure would remain Rs60 billion in the next fiscal.

He said the PTI government had increased funds for tribal districts more than three times.

Mr Jhagra said the current expenditure of tribal districts had already exceeded Rs60 billion and was likely to reach Rs62 billion mark by the end of the outgoing financial year.

He also said the federal government had increased the salaries of its employees by 15 per cent besides pension, while the non-salary expenditure of the region would also increase due to infrastructure development.

The minister wondered if the tribal districts' current expenditure stood at Rs62 billion in the current fiscal, how justified the federal government was in allocating Rs60 billion for it next year.

He complained that the federal government didn't formally involve the provincial government about those allocations before the budget announcement.

Mr Jhagra said he took the initiative of going to Islamabad and held informal meetings with the relevant officials and tried to explain to them the ground realities for required funds.

'We...