KARACHI, June 24: Participants of a seminar have called for giving full constitutional protection to the local government system because it can be an effective and immediate way of addressing to peoples' grievances.

These views were expressed in one of the resolutions adopted at the end of the National Convention on Local Government System organised by the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) at a local hotel.

The conference resolved that in order to strengthen the LG system, it was necessary to respect provincial autonomy as spelt out in the constitution, and the government should withdraw concurrent list of subjects.

It was also resolved that the Police Order 2002 should be amended according to the aspirations of the people, and all appointments in police department be made locally (from respective districts).

The labour department should be devolved in its true spirit and should be given under the control of respective district councils. All councillors of union councils should be given honourable and equal honorarium.

It demanded that obstacles in the way of smooth working of citizen community boards should be removed, and they be allowed to work according to the LGO. CCBs should be allowed to start working with 10pc resources instead of 20pc.

It also called for amending IRO-2002 in the light of the suggestions proposed by the tripartite conference. All workers should be given the right of association as per the ILO convention.

To mitigate poverty and to decrease unemployment, the government should introduce new modes of employment and open all closed industrial units. All industrial and trading units should be mandated to pay minimum wages as approved by the government.

The next local government elections should be on joint electorate system, and the separate electoral list should be withdrawn, the conference resolved. Eminent economist Dr Kaiser Bengali stressed that the present local government system should be given full constitutional protection as was given to the National Security Council under LFO.

He suggested that the middle tier of tehsil - between the district and UC - should be abolished, which had created much confusion in the system and had become an obstacle in running its affairs smoothly.

Mr B M Kutty, in his presidential address, referred to the attitude of political parties of India and Pakistan towards the local bodies system. He said while in India, local bodies went from strength to strength under political governments; in Pakistan, it were the army regimes which sponsored local governments and held local bodies elections.

Whereas, civil governments chose either to dissolve the local bodies or rendered them powerless. He called upon political parties to strengthen the local government system, a vehicle that would allow them to assess the needs and aspirations of the people at grass roots level, draw up and implement appropriate development schemes according to their needs and aspirations, and resolve their problems.

Mir Zulfiqar Ali, National Co-ordinator of the programme said the vision of the programme was to strengthen the local government system through which it would be possible to address to labour issues and problems at the grass roots level.