Lawmakers have given a vote of confidence to three government ministers of the 11 whose ministries are under scrutiny for poor budget management two years ago.
The ministers of education Farouq Wardak, commerce and industry Anwar-ul-Haq Ahadi, and counter-narcotics Ahmad Moqbel will keep their positions after receiving the vote of confidence on Wednesday.
The three appeared before parliament on Wednesday, along with the minister of energy and water Mohammad Ismail Khan, to explain the reasons for their ministries' failure to spend more than 50 percent of their respective development budgets in the Persian year 1390 (March 2011-March 2012).
The vote of confidence for Ismail Khan was deemed too "vague" to be upheld and a second vote will be taken at a later date, according to parliamentary officials.
However, some of the MPs rejected the decision for a re-vote on Ismail Khan, saying that the minister had not received sufficient votes and that should be the final outcome on the matter.
"Every minister who didn't receive parliament's vote of confidence – like the ministers who were disqualified today – should be disqualified. There should be no disagreement about it," said MP Mohammad Naim Lalai Hameedzai on Wednesday.
MP Shukria Barikzai scoffed at the decision to have another vote for Ismail Khan.
"If the parliament decides that the ministers who received a low vote are not disqualified, it will be then a masterstroke that no parliament in the world has ever done," she said Wednesday.
The other ministers who were questioned by the lawmakers on Monday – economics, mines, and information and culture – will also be voted on at a later date.
Those who were questioned by parliament on Wednesday repeated what the ministers said on Monday: that they never received most of the funds allocated in their development budgets therefore they could not spend more than 50 percent of that budget.
"If the funds assured by the donors had been provided to this ministry, our levels of budget expenditure would have been higher," education minister Wardak said. "If we calculate [the percentage spent] based on the funds that were provided to us, then we spent more than 60 percent of the budget."
Counter narcotics minister Moqbel claimed that his ministry spent a large amount of the budget it had.
"We were able to spend a great amount of our budget, but despite a number of donors assuring us of funds and it was even put in the budget, the funds were not provided to us," he said.
Minister of energy and water Ismail Khan said: "Out of all the budget in our hands, a large amount was spent in development projects; however, a few million dollars which was in the budget was not provided to us by the donors."
Finance minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, who has been present at both the Monday and Wednesday parliamentary sessions, supported the reasons given by the ministers saying that most of the donors have reversed their assurances on the promised funds.
He told the lawmakers that the budgets were estimated based on donor assurances, but many of the donors including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank did not deliver the full amount of their assurances in 1390 and 1391.
The remaining four ministers to face parliament – higher education, interior, defence, and urban development – are to be questioned by the lawmakers on Saturday.