QUETTA, April 15: District Nazim Mohammed Rahim Kakar led a demonstration of Nazims and Naib Nazims in front of Governor's House on Thursday to protest against the taking over of the Water and Sewerage Authority from the city government by the provincial government.

The city Nazim, who had imposed Section 144, relaxed it for an hour when police stopped the procession from proceeding towards Governor's House. He said the protesters had no political designs and they wanted to record their protest publicly to expose the bureaucrats and some politicians in the Balochistan government, who were making attempts to sabotage the local government system.

He told newsmen at the gate of Governor's House after handing over a memorandum to the military secretary of the province's constitutional head that President Gen Pervez Musharraf on the request of the city government had allocated funds to Wasa for a water scheme but some elements in the provincial administration separated the department from it.

He accused the provincial government of attempting to make the local government system a failure by changing the ordinance aimed at transferring powers to the grassroots.

"If any untoward incident occurs in the city, the provincial functionaries blame the district government for poor maintenance of law and order but when the question of utilization of development funds comes, the corrupt bureaucrats jump in to get benefit from those," he alleged.

The protestors later went to the city government building, where Rahim Kakar, Khuzdar District Nazim Sardar Aslam Bizenjo and Quetta Naib Nazim Mir Wali Mohammad Lehri spoke to them.

The three-page memorandum claimed that under Section 54(H) of the Local Government Ordinance 2001, the water sources and supply, control and development rested with the district government.