PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government and Rural Development Department will not hire private consultants for monitoring and supervising the execution of its small development works.

Officials told Dawn that Chief Minister Pervez Khattak on December 2, 2013 allowed the LG&RD department to carry out small construction works without engaging consultants.

`The decision came after the department explained to the chief minister the difficulties it would face in engaging consultants for monitoring development works as small as construction of streets, pavements, sewage lines,` said an offi-cial.

The government had recently made it mandatory for all its departments and project execution agencies to hire consultants for monitoring and evaluation of their development schemes involving new construction works.

The LG&RD department has identified 12 new projects for which it would hire private firms to supervise the construction works in all the four major sectors of its focus, including construction of roads, bridges, buildings/structures, and water and sanitation.

The department, however, has managed to convince the chief minister to exempt its small construction works from being supervised by private consultants.

Local government minister Inayatullah Khan told Dawn a few weeks ago that he had talked with the chief minister about the problems his department would face in hiring private firms for small works.

The provincial government distributes around Rs1.67 billion annually among 25 districts for development activities. The money trickles down tothe tehsil council and from there to the union councils for small schemes as per local needs.

Since each of the 992 UCs usually get hardly a few hundred thousand rupees, the money is spent, at best, on minor works, including construction of streets, sidewalks and drains.

According to of ficial circles, the number of such schemes comes to thousands across the province.

If the department had to hire consultants, it would have taken it to undertake an extensive exercise to select consultants for supervising petty works in the 25 districts.

After the chief minister exempted the department from hiring consultants, all the deputy commissioners and district administrations have been informed about the same with instructions to speed up the construction work.

The chief minister, chairing the meeting at his office on Dec 2, had also asked the department to expedite utilisation of district development funds.

The district administrations, according to sources, have been directed to implement the CM`s instruction.

`The LG&RD department shall issue instructions to all concerned regarding expeditious utilisation of district funds, including that of district development institutions, district annual development programme and other funds involving in-tervention of district governments, tehsil and union councils etc, and submit the compliance report to the chief minister in this regard,` contains an official document.

The government`s policy to engage consultants for monitoring new construction works of the line departments has taken six months to become effective, causing delays in launching new works planned for the current financialyear.

However, the government could have saved the LG&RD department`s small works from the loss of time if it had issued the waiver earlier.

No new works have been undertaken this fiscal so far though over five months have passed, undermining implementation on the annual development programme.