PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has dropped the plan of establishing 800 schools and 35 colleges from its development portfolio while rationalising the previous Annual Development Programmes (ADPs).

The officials in the provincial finance department told Dawn that construction of those schools and colleges that were deleted from the development programme was not initiated.

They said that the estimated cost of the dropped schemes including construction of schools and colleges and other development projects in the elementary and secondary education and higher education departments was around Rs50 billion.

These projects have been part of ADP since 2014-15

The officials said that those schools and colleges remained part of the previous several ADPs since their reflection several years ago but their construction could not be started.

“These schools and colleges have been part of the ADPs since 2014-15,” they said.

The officials said that construction of those schools and college could not started for many reasons mainly lack of funds, disputes in acquiring land, differences among the members of the provincial assembly over site selection and cases pending in courts.

According to the whitepaper, at the end of ANP tenure in 2013-14, completion period of development schemes was one and a half years and throw-forward liabilities stood at Rs37 billion. However, since then the throw-forward liabilities skyrocketed in the previous government of PTI and reached Rs469 billion in the current year.

Throw-forward liabilities are the expenses that cannot be made in the current year and are budgeted to be met in later years based on average allocations.

In some cases, such projects remain unexecuted for years and only token allocations are made for them. This accumulation of development schemes has increased the size of the province’s throw-forward liabilities to a staggering Rs469 billion, which requires seven years to be met.

This forced the government to rethink its development priority and embark on a drastic rationalisation of the development schemes in all sectors, which as per the budget documents, reduced throw-forward liability by Rs203 billion for the fiscal 2019-20. The period required for throw-forward liabilities has now been reduced to 3.9 years from 6.5 years.

Officials in the planning and development department said that as per procedures, the provincial government reflected hundreds of schools in bulk in ADP every year. They said that chief minister issued special directive for construction of each school. They added that usually the chief minister allocated such schools to those lawmakers, who were close to him.

As per criteria, the total cost of establishment of a government college is Rs300 million while government spends Rs14 million on construction of a school. The official completion time for a college and school is three years but usually a construction of a college takes around five years and that of a school three years.

Other dropped development schemes of higher education department include performance-based grant to public sector universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, award for the best teachers and students in government colleges, renovation of the Regional Institute for Teachers Education (RITE) building at Gul Bahar Peshawar, support to Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University, Peshawar and purchase of land for Wari Campus of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University Sheringal, Dir Upper.

Provincial Finance Minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra was not available for comments.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2019