Afghan parliament dismisses another minister

Kabul, Nov 15: The Afghan Wolesi Jirga or Lower House of parliament dismissed another minister on Tuesday for failure to spend the development budget, bringing the number of disqualified ministers to seven since launching the process on Saturday.

"Since the Minister for Communication and Information Technology, Abdul Razaq Wahidi has failed to secure vote of confidence from the lawmakers he has been disqualified and I am calling upon the president to introduce new face for the post," Xinhua news agency quoted deputy speaker of the house, Abdul Zahir Qadir, as saying. 

However, he said the ministers for Counter-Narcotics, Water and Power and minister of Agriculture and Livestock have survived the move.

The Afghan government has 25 ministries and more ministers will be summoned in the coming days to the Lower House over their failure in spending the development budget and a few more ministers might be disqualified.

The majority of the government's budgeting sectors including ministries have failed to spend even half of the allocated development budgets in the past 10 months.