Lahore: No uplift project in last CDGL budget

[Naveed Yaseen]

Friday, July 17, 2009
By Our Correspondent

LAHORE

THE Lahore District Assembly unanimously passed a surplus budget of Rs 14.82 billion for 2009-10 on Thursday.

District Nazim Mian Amer Mehmood presented the budget in which the total estimated income of the City District Government Lahore (CDGL) was Rs 14.824 billion against the total expenditure of Rs 14.351 billion.

He said the budget had a surplus of Rs 472.5 million. District Naib Nazim Idrees Hanif chaired the session.

Delivering his budget speech, the nazim announced that the budget had no new development scheme as it is being learnt that the district governments would not be allowed to complete remaining three months of its constitutional tenure and administrators would be appointed in place of nazims.

He, however, said that if elected representatives of the District Assembly would be allowed to function in future under the district government system, a new session of the house would be called to approve the development schemes.

“According to the law, the district governments can utilize 8 per cent funds of the total budget every month for the remaining period of their tenure under the devolution plan and we will try to do the same in case we get an opportunity”, he said.

Treasury benches protested after the announcement that no new development scheme was included in the budget due to the reason that the government will appoint administrators.

Total expenditures had been estimated at Rs 14.5 billion that includes Rs 10 billion for non-development and Rs 4.5 billion for ongoing development schemes. Half a billion rupees had been left as surplus amount. The non-development expenditures mainly include salaries of employees.

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