Peshawar   -  Caretaker Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Azam Khan on Tuesday presided over a meeting to discuss and review progress on foreign-funded development projects in the province including merged tribal areas.

Chief Secretary Nadeem Aslam Chaudhary, Additional Chief Secretary Zubair Asghar Quraishi, administrative secretaries of the concerned departments and other high ups attended the meeting.

The participants were given detailed briefing about the progress made so far on the foreign-funded development projects and other related matters. It was told that under the foreign-funded development portfolio, a total of 66 development projects worth Rs849 billion were reflected in the Annual Development Programme of the current financial year. It was further informed that Rs114 billion have been allocated for the aforementioned projects in the current fiscal year, out of which Rs10.9 billion have been released so far.

Briefing about the details of development projects in the various sectors, the meeting was informed that five projects were reflected in agriculture sector, three in public health engineering, four projects in the elementary & secondary education and seven projects in the sector of power & energy, four projects in the health, three projects in local government, five in road communication, two in tourism, three projects in irrigation, one project each in forests, home, industries and labour whereas nineteen in multi-sectoral development sector. 

It was informed that as compared to other provinces, progress on the development projects in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was much better. 

The Chief Minister, while expressing his satisfaction over the overall progress on these projects, directed the quarters concerned to take necessary steps in order to further expedite the pace of work on these projects and to ensure their timely completion. 

He directed the administrative secretaries of concerned departments to regularly review the progress on foreign funded projects under their respective departments so that bottlenecks hindering the smooth implementation of the project could be identified and removed timely. He made it clear that no unnecessary delay would be allowed in the completion of these public welfare development projects.

The CM termed the Kurram Tangi Water Resource Development Project as of vital importance and directed the quarter concerned to convene a special meeting of all relevant authorities in order to find a way forward to accelerate pace of work on this important project.