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Sindh government to focus on service delivery: Murad
APPKARACHI: Adviser to Sindh Chief Minister for Finance Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that the provincial government would now focus on service delivery in every department. Addressing the post budget press briefing here on Saturday, he said we want to improve our infrastructure and repair the buildings of schools and hospitals and road maintenance. He said that many schools have no boundary walls and their roofs are at the verge of collapse. The same situation exists in health sector where pathetic condition of hospitals could be witnessed. “We have now enhanced school maintenance and repair allocations from Rs 400 million to Rs 4 billion and have devised a mechanism to properly utilize the funds. You will see the difference in a year, because education department itself monitors the utilization of funds and headmaster of the school will be made responsible for not utilizing the funds. In health sector, the adviser said that the funds have been enhanced from Rs 5.3 billion to Rs 9 billion to improve health service delivery, providing equipment, X-ray machines, CT scans and enhancing the medicine budget of all the public hospitals. The adviser lauded the provincial government’s effort to allocate Rs 5 billion fund for the universities and said that grant will be issued through Sindh Higher Education Commission established through legislation by Sindh Assembly. Murad Ali Shah said the provincial government would soon announce a bid for Rapid Transit Project under public private partnership and completion of the project will take six month. He said that the province will get extra Rs 3.2 billion from the new taxes and would try to utilize all Rs 168 billion of annual development funds on various schemes next year. The Advisor said that Sindh government has demanded of federal government to withdraw gas infrastructure development cess, transfer collection of sales tax on goods and release provincial government share from divisible poll on daily basis rather than quarterly and monthly releases of the funds.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk