May 6, 2005	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 26, 1426

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ISLAMABAD, May 5: National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) has amended the law-enforcement mechanism at tehsil and district level in Local Government System, the NRB chairman Daniyal Aziz told Dawn on Thursday.

“According to these amendments fine and ticket system would be introduced,” he said.

The NRB chief said that in the amended system tehsils would be empowered to collect or recover their own revenue, taxes and fines and these would be separated from the taxes and revenues to be collected by the district governments.

He said the provincial chief ministers would not be given sweeping powers to take any action against district and tehsil nazims. However, the procedure of dismissal of officials had been amended, he said.

Under the amended procedure, the district nazims could be dismissed on the recommendations of a local government commission (LGC), instead of their removal on the decision of a simple majority of the provincial assembly.

The LGC would consist of six members and the provincial local government minister would be LGC chairman with two members (one each to be nominated by the leader of the house and leader of the opposition in the provincial assemblies), two technocrats to be nominated by the government and the local government secretary.

Responding to a question about proposed appointment of administrators for supervising the forthcoming local government polls in the country, the NRB chairman said not the administrators but “caretakers” would be appointed for this purpose.

“But the caretakers, who would be senior government servants, would have no administrative powers as enjoyed by the administrators,” he said.

He said district and session judges would also perform their duties as returning officers

Mr Aziz said caretakers would be appointed next month after the Election Commission notified the schedule for the elections of local governments and district nazims.

The NRB chief said this time the nazim and naib nazim would not contest the elections as joint candidates.

“The procedure for the election of nazims will remain the same, but the naib nazim will now be from the members of district, tehsil or union council.

Similarly, the composition of the union councils has also been changed for the forth coming local government elections with a reduction in seats from 21 to 13.