Land issues delaying work on govt buildings in ex-Fata.

PESHAWAR -- The issues arising out of land acquisition in tribal districts are causing prolonged delays in the construction of government office buildings even two years after the region's merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, sources say.

Sources told Dawn that since the funds released for buying land and putting up buildings weren't being spent, their utilisation by the relevant government departments had slowed down.

They said after the extension of laws and government departments to the seven merged tribal districts, the government required buildings for district complexes to set up offices of all government departments at district level and tehsil complexes at tehsil level.

The sources said the government also required buildings to establish judicial complexes, police stations, prisons and other necessary installations in all tribal districts formerly known as Fata.

They, however, said the departments, which didn't need land, were utilising funds to build and rehabilitate roads and execute water and irrigation channel projects.

Officials reveal slow utilisation of funds released for the purpose

The sources said allocations for the development of tribal districts under the federal government's Tribal Decade Strategy and Annual Development Programme totalled Rs83 billion in the current financial year.

They said Rs40 billion had so far released to the seven tribal districts, including Rs24 billion by the federal government under the accelerated implementation programme and Rs16 billion by the KP government under the annual development programme.

The sources said In first half of the financial year, the government departments had utilised only Rs7 billion out of Rs24 billion from the federally released funds and Rs5 billion utilised from Rs16 billion funds released by the KP government.

They said in the previous financial year (2019-20), the federal government had pledged Rs72 billion for the Annual Development Program (ADP) and Accelerated Implementation Program out of which only Rs37 billion were released.

The sources said the KP government had also pledged Rs11 billion in the previous financial year for development schemes but it released Rs1 billion only.

They insisted that though an amount less than the pledged one was released, a big chunk of the released funds were surrendered by the government departments as it couldn't be utilised due to the poor interest of the departments and several other issues mainly related to land acquisition.

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