Bureau Report
PESHAWAR: Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Finance Minister Taimur Khan Jhagra has assured the provincial government employees that their salaries to be released soon, rejecting the reports of default.
“Today is the first working day of the month. Salaries of the [K-P government] employees will be released today and all social media reports that Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is going to default are baseless,” he said while addressing a press conference in Peshawar on Monday.
The clarification came amid reports that the provincial government failed to pay last month’s (September) salary to its employees amid financial crisis. The reports further claimed that the public sector workers would receive the salaries on 15th of October.
However, the K-P minister admitted that the delay in the release of the salaries was related to the transfer of funds from the Centre.
Jhagra further said that despite “strange attitude” of the federal finance division towards the province, the K-P government will not leave the province in financial distress. In August this year just three days before the revival of the multi-billion dollar lending by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government had tried to derail the programme in an attempt that the then finance minister, Miftah Ismail termed a “conspiracy against Pakistan”.
In a letter to Ismail, Jhagra had linked the provincial cash surplus in this fiscal year – which is a part of Pakistan’s deal with the IMF – with the clearance of the Rs100 billion claimed liabilities.
Under the IMF deal, the K-P government is required to generate a Rs117 billion cash surplus, which it has already consented to provide through a memorandum of understanding. Ismail is a co-signatory of the Letter of Intent (LoI) dispatched to the IMF a few days ago for the revival of the programme.
“Please note that in these conditions [floods], and without the resolution of the issues highlighted previously, for the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to actually leave a surplus will be next to impossible,” Jhagra wrote in the communiqué sent to Ismail on August 26. Ismail had termed the letter “deplorable” and a “conspiracy to derail the IMF programme and sink the rupee”.
