LAHORE, May 19: Punjab Law and Local Government Minister Raja Muhammad Basharat has said that development funds worth Rs5 billion were stuck in the citizen community boards (CCBs) in the province due to lukewarm public response.
Inaugurating a one-day workshop regarding policy dialogue on CCBs here on Wednesday morning, the minister said the programme was proceeding successfully in the Punjab but the public response was not as expected despite reduction in community share in the participatory development scheme.
He said that failure of the scheme to attract public response despite being better than the matching grants scheme provided a cause for concern. People were required to contribute only 20 per cent to the uplift costs under the CCBs scheme whereas their share under the matching grants scheme was 50 per cent, he added.
The minister said people were generally reluctant to contribute to the CCBs schemes because they thought that development was the responsibility of the government.
Leaving aside the example of the well-off people of Sialkot, who had built an airport for themselves, those living elsewhere could not be expected to dish out money for uplift projects because of being worried about inflation, unemployment and other local problems, he said.
Mr Basharat called upon the local bodies representatives to create awareness about the community boards, saying that the community's contribution to the projects could be reduced from the existing 20 per cent.
He said the success of the boards was of vital importance for establishing the credibility of the local government system. He directed the Punjab local government director-general to translate the CCBs name, literature and forms into Urdu for better comprehension.
The minister claimed that the Punjab was the only province where the local government institutions were functioning successfully due to the commitment of the government.
He said the system did not provide any hierarchical link among the three tiers of union councils, tehsil/town councils and district councils. For instance, the district Nazim could compel the Naib Nazim to convene a session of the council in case the latter did not accede to his request in this regard, he said, adding that the Nazim should be empowered to convene the session in that situation.
Speaking at the concluding session, Social Welfare and Women Development Minister Syeda Sughra Imam said that information about the CCBs and application forms would be available on the internet soon.
She said the social welfare department would organize capacity-building workshops for spreading awareness about the community boards in society. The department's officials would help the people in registration of the CCBs and provide them advice for the formulation of development projects.
About international best practices on CCBs, Waqasul Hassan said Bolivia had coordination bodies to monitor the working of the community development organisations. The bodies could get the release of funds to erring bodies suspended, he said.
Municipal governing boards supervized the working of CCBs in Florida where development schemes were available on the internet in advance for public awareness, Waqas said, adding that environment-friendly groups monitored activities of the community boards and industries in Kerala and India.
Former provincial minister Shaheen Attiqur Rehman said the Nazims had reportedly a monopoly over the development projects and the CCBs of those opposed to them remained unregistered.
She said the CCBs could not address problems like population explosion. Ali Akbar Vans said the LG system was threatened by the political leadership. A UC Nazim said the community boards should be freed from bureaucratic controls.
Decentralisation Programme Director-General Babar Yaqub said the workshop had been held on CCBs at Quetta and would be held at Karachi and Peshawer in near future. The Sialkot district Nazim, the Chiniot tehsil Nazim and Dunyapur CCBs' representative gave presentations on the exemplary uplift works undertaken by the boards in their respective areas.
