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LAHORE, March 12: The Punjab government has decided in principle to hand over the water and sanitation management to district governments while immediately banning the transfer of revenue officers to meet tax collection targets.
It has also directed the district governments to ban intra-district transfers and postings of the revenue officers, including excise and taxation officers, tehsildars and naib-tehsildars.
The decisions were taken during a meeting on resource mobilization which was presided over by Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi here at the Civil Secretariat on Wednesday.
Sources told Dawnthat the meeting was important in the sense that it reviewed overall resource mobilization in the province, including the future utilization of the Rs26 billion Asian Development Bank loan.
The marathon meeting which lasted for about four hours also reviewed institutional reforms and working and structure of various departments, they said.
The sources said it was decided at the meeting that besides managing the water supply and sanitation system district governments would also collect bills of the utilities and initiate related development projects.
The decision to hand over the management of water supply and sanitation from Wasa to the districts was the first step towards the readjustment of the role of the district governments.
The meeting felt that managing the water and sanitation system was an unnecessary burden on the government and it was primarily a local government function.
More adjustments would soon be made in the local government system as the government was feeling that many of its functions had unjustifiably been transferred to the districts and it (government) was unnecessarily handling some affairs of the latter, the sources said.
Regarding the ban on the transfer and posting of the revenue officers, they said this had been done to help them achieve their respective revenue targets. It was felt that frequent transfers of revenue officers were badly affecting the revenue collection. Their performance would be assessed on their ability to recover the requisite taxes.
The chief minister directed the authorities concerned to ensure an increase in the tax collection and adopt stringent measures to plug tax evasion at various levels.
POPULATION WELFARE DEPARTMENT: Sources said the chief minister desired that the population welfare department should be revamped within a week so as to check the growth of population, which the meeting felt was eating up development in the province.
The chief minister directed the department secretary to immediately submit a proposal regarding its reorganization and strengthening.
While reviewing the entertainment tax on cinema houses, the chief minister said the government would protect religious, moral and cultural norms. It would introduce a law to check obscenity in the name of entertainment, he announced.
Mr Elahi said the government was planning to establish a micro-credit bank so as to eliminate poverty through the network of small industries.
The chief minister directed the finance department to allocate funds so that the scheme of giving houses to public servants on their retirement could immediately be launched.
Under the scheme nominal deduction would be made from the salaries of the government functionaries who would be given new houses on retirement.
The chief minister also directed the finance department to provide funds for the construction of bridges, highways, roads, housing and the health insurance project.
He directed the education department to complete all its development projects within the stipulated timeframe as no laxity in the utilization of funds would be tolerated.
The meeting was attended by Excise and Taxation Minister Dr Shafiq Chaudhry, Chief Secretary Hafeez Akhtar Randhawa, the planning and development chairman and secretaries of various departments.
