In recent months, a worsening financial crisis has gripped tehsil municipal administrations (TMAs) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, particularly in the southern belt and the merged tribal districts, rendering the authorities responsible for social development interventions unable to pay monthly salaries to their employees.
On top of the political instability and financial meltdown, which have badly affected the development processes in the country, millions of the urban poor have been directly and indirectly affected by the resource crunch facing the TMAs, which are typically responsible for planning social development, resource distribution, land use and identify and prioritize development needs at the grassroots level.
The TMAs have to either generate their own resources or look up to the government for financial grants to meet their obligations. But, the TMAs of southern districts, and all other TMAs of the province except a very few, are cash-starved and lack resources to generate funds. The present financial crisis has handicapped them altogether.
According media reports, the employees of tehsil municipal administrations of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s southern districts, including 25 TMAs of the merged districts, have not received their monthly salaries since last June, deepening their financial woes, which directly reflect on the service delivery to the masses.
As the TMAs of the tribal districts are operating in a tax-free zone, these civic bodies had to look to the provincial government for financial support and annual grants to run their affairs and receive their monthly salaries on regular basis.
According to the Local Council Board, at present municipal services are being provided in different tehsils of the tribal districts including Kurram, North Waziristan, South Waziristan, Bajaur, Khyber, Mohmand, and Orakzai, but the government has yet to release their annual grants to streamline their official affairs. Last time, the provincial government had released financial grant worth Rs 6 million to each of these TMAS in June.
It goes without saying that the TMAs require regular funds to pay salaries to employees and pay for continuing official work. Most of these TMAs have neither sources of generating income nor possess properties to enable them meet their financial expenditures and salaries.
Amid the recent escalation in prices of essential food items, the TMA employees going without salaries have staged protest rallies to press the government to release their pending salaries and allocate funds for municipal service delivery. As hundreds of municipal employees had been struggling to make ends meet, the authorities concerned have maintained a pin drop silence to ensure uninterrupted services to the thousands of urban poor.
The government needs to revisit its development strategy and ensure timely release of funds to the TMAs, so that the quality of service delivery is improved, which is only possible when the poor employees received their salaries on regular basis.
