Pakistani Lawmakers Ignore Health, Education Sectors

Pakistani senators and National Assembly members have conspicuously ignored the health and education sectors while allocating their constituency development funds in the past five years.

"Health got a paltry allocation of 1 percent and education merely 4 percent of the total funds released by the federal government to the MPs," The News Monday quoted a finance ministry source as saying.

Statistics also expose the claims of the government of having provided "unprecedented" funds to Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, particularly in the last five years.

"In reality, this province's allocations are less than 6 percent of the total federal funds spent through the MPs in different areas," The News said.

Punjab and Sindh got the lion's share of 75 percent from the total allocation of funds by MPs.

"The government followed its predecessors in maintaining status quo in allotting funds to the federating units for services sector uplift. Health and education sectors were kept on the backburner during this period," the newspaper said.

Balochistan, "despite hue and cry on the part of its MPs", received nothing for health in 2002-03, 2003-04, 2005-06 and 2006-07 till the end of the current parliamentary year Nov 14...

"The North West Frontier Province (NWFP) comes after Balochistan while receiving highly limited funds in these five years," the newspaper noted.

Pakistani MPs were allocated constituency development funds shortly after Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali became prime minister in 2002.

They were permitted to utilise this money in sevens areas -- health, education, electricity, road network, water supply, sanitation, gas supply and telephone connections.

Source-IANS
LIN/V