PESHAWAR: The districts governments across the province are likely to get around Rs10 billion less than their share in the provincial Annual Development Programme (ADP) for 2016-17 in violation of local government law, according to of ficial documents.

Under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Act, 2013, the provincial government is bound to allocate 30 per cent of ADP for local governments, which amounts to Rs37.5 billion in the ADP for 201617. But contrary to the law, the local governments would likely to get only 22.6 per cent share in ADP, according to official documents.

The planning and development department has pitched the prov-ince`s ADP for the year 2016-17 at Rs161 billion, of which provincial component makes for about Rs125 billion, while Rs36 billion will come from foreign funding.

However, under the LG Act, the government is bound to allocate 30 per cent of provincial component of ADP to districts. Under this formula, the share of district governments in ADP of Rs125 billion should be Rs37.5 billion.

Section 53 of the KPLGA states: `-----in addition to the establishment charges budgeted for the devolved functions and transfers in lieu of Octroi and Zilla taxes, the development grant for local governments shall be so determined that it is not less than thirty per cent of the total development budget of the province in the respective year.

In the budget, the government has allocated Rs33.9 billion for three tiers of local governments including district, tehsil/town and village and neighbourhood councils against their total share of Rs37.5 billion.

Besides this, another big chunk of Rs5.67 billion out of the Rs33.9 billion will be released to the local gov-ernments subject to availability of funds.

This brought downs that total district ADP portfolio to Rs28.23 billion, reveal the documents.

Minister for Local Government Inayatullah Khan, when contacted, said that funds for local governments were allocated, keeping in view Rs113 billion out of the total Rs125 billion ADP. Asked as to why budget allocation for district governments was not made in light of the total ADP, the minister said that Rs12 billion reflected in the ADP was actually the revenue to be generated from the state lands which was not generated yet.

Himayatullah Mayar, the district nazim of Mardan, said that provincial government had allocated funds for the development schemes in the budget for 2015-16 keeping in view the revenue based on assumptions.

`The provincial government has repeated the same mistake and again a big chunk of revenue has been shown in the budget documents for the coming fiscal year which have no chance to be col-lected,` he said. The local governments would again face huge cut on the development schemes as the provincial government was incompetent to generate money, he said.

In the outgoing Escal year, the provincial government had earmarked Rs42 billion for the local governments as per their share in the provincial ADP. However, Rs12 billion was retained by the provincial government to complete the ongoing projects in the devolved departments.

The remaining Rs30 billion was divided in the three tiers of the local governments under the established formula based on population. Of total devolved ADP, each district and tehsil governments had a share of Rs8.587 billion while Rs13.1 billion went to the village and neighbourhood councils.

However, the provincial government slashed half of the budget for the district and tehsil governments and 31 per cent of the village and neighbourhood councils when the financial crisis emerged in the province in the third quarter of the ongoing financial year.