LAHORE - A dispute, involving Rs 341 million of public money, between two government departments has surfaced.

The Livestock and Dairy Development (L&DD) and Punjab Skills Development Program (PSDP), a subordinate plan of Industries Department, are currently at loggerheads over the issue of funds for training of the L&DD employees. Of late, the Planning and Development Department (P&D) rejected the L&DD’s proposal seeking funds for capacity building programme, arguing that it was basically the responsibility of his department to complete training exercise within its Annual Development Program (ADP).

As per documents avaialble with The Nation, the development scheme was prepared with the objective to train 45,000 personnel (25,000 during 2016-17, and 20,000 during 2017-18) under the ADP 2016-17 at total cost of Rs341 million.

Following this, L&DD Secretary Naseem Sadiq wrote a letter to the Industries Department secretary, a parent department of PSDP, that it was actually the job of his department to undertake this exercise and more funds were required for the purpose.

Sadiq further wrote that the training target for the L&DD employees should be deleted to avoid any embarrassing situation. The letter further reads: “At present there is no target L&DD department to be achieved under the skilled development program as the proposal of the department was not considered and approved by the competent forum for funding under Skilled Development Program.”

“The department feels that initialisation of any training will promote quackery and ultimately damage the livestock. The department has itself designed the capacity building program as per the Livestock policy. To start any program by the Punjab Skill Development Fund (PSDF) in isolation and without consultation with L&DD will have very limited impact on development sector,” the document added.

The L&DD department then prepared a comprehensive plan with implementation strategy and mechanism to train L&DD employees. The department also wanted funds under the Skill Development Program that was not entertained even after a number of meetings with the P&D officials. The PC-1 of the scheme was also presented before the PDWP meeting that was not approved. An official of the Skills Development Program (SDP) said that the project just coordinated the training program and the departments concerned manage funds to train people.

“The Punjab government has prepared a Growth Strategy program (2015-18) which identifies the challenges like under-utilised manufacturing capacity, stagnant exports, productivity deficits, slowing progress on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), slow employment generation, under-employment and widening skills gaps, underpinning all of those is the rising security deficit,” the official added.