KABUL - Wolesi Jirga members, with a majority vote, on Monday decided to summon 15 ministers and a dozen departmental heads to brief lawmakers on their failure to effectively use budgetary allocations during the outgoing Afghan fiscal year.
The parliamentarians voted to summon the officials concerned in coming sessions and if their answers were not convincing, they would face a vote of no confidence.

Ministries including foreign affairs, economy, commerce, information and culture, counternarcotics, refugee and repatriate, justice, rural rehabilitation and development, transport and aviation, hajj and religious affairs, higher education, agriculture, power and energy, finance and borders have failed to utilize fully their budgets.

According to the Parliament Finance and Budget Commission head, Amir Khan Yaar, the mentioned ministries and some departments had so far used only 11 to 39 percent of their development budget during the outing fiscal year that ends on March 21.

Almaz Zahid, an MP from central Parwan province, said all the ministers should be summoned to explain their failure in this regard. Another parliamentarian from Herat, Nahid Farid, said the government had no respect for decisions taken on the house floor.

She said seven ministries were currently being headed by acting ministers, if the elected ministers failed to get the vote of confidence from the house, the number of acting minister would further increase.
Meanwhile, parliamentarian Ramazan Bashardost, on the other hand, said the house itself had failed to use 40 percent of the budget.