Budget 2017-18: A country hit hard by terrorism ignores top National Counter Terrorism Authority NACTA
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ISLAMABAD - A country that has been hit hard by terrorism in more than last one decade has ignored the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) in the federal budget 2017-18.
The federal government has again ignored the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA), the country’s supreme counter-terrorism body, by allocating only Rs140 million for it out of the total allocation of Rs91.18 billion for internal security and law and order for the fiscal year 2017-18.
Besides the NACTA, the Narcotics Control Division also remained on the low priority of the government as it has been allocated only Rs2.48 billion to carry out its anti-narcotics operations throughout the country, both on borders and within the cities.
The federal government has allocated 91.18 billion rupees for law and order of the country in the finance bill of 2017-18 that is slightly high as compared to Rs86.64 billion allocation of the previous financial year.
Besides, an amount of Rs 15.6 billion have been allocated for the development projects under Interior Division and out of this allocation, an amount of Rs1.8 billion have been earmarked for the provision of security to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor Project (CPEC) related projects.
However, NACTA has been allocated only 140 million rupees against its revised budget allocation of 1.56 billion rupees for the last financial year. NACTA chief has been demanding around Rs2 billion for the re-organisation of NACTA to make it a powerful body as part of the National Action Plan (NAP) on counter-terrorism.
