June 24, 2006	Saturday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 27, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, June 23: Members of civil society and professional associations have demanded of the Rawalpindi local government (LG) to hold an open discussion on the forthcoming district council budget in order to ensure greater participation and transparency.

The Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI) has sent a letter to District Nazim Raja Javed Ikhlas seeking an open debate on the budget. The letter, a copy of which is available with Dawn, has been endorsed by a a number of stakeholders including common citizens, representatives of civil society organisations, students and members of district and high courts bar associations.

The centre is of the view that many councillors have raised serious objections to the way budget sessions were conducted in the past.

They were highly critical of the fact that the council did not conduct its function seriously due to the inability of the councillors to get enough time to debate the budget.

CPDI has demanded that the budget document must be shared with the councillors sufficiently in advance at least seven days before the budget session. This would enable councillors to come to the session well-prepared. It is against the district government rules as well as a bad practice, if the document was shared with the councillors just before or during the budget session.

The letter demanded that the budget document must be accessible to citizens, so that, if interested they could review it and give feedback.

“Recently, we tried and found it very difficult to obtain precious documents from the relevant offices of the Rawalpindi district. This attitude of secrecy on the part of the government offices is in violation of various explicit provisions of the Local Government Ordinance 2001. This attitude effectively excludes public participation and amounts to non-transparent governance, which does not help in establishing the integrity and credibility of offices concerned,” the letter stated.

It stresses that all councillors must get the opportunity to express their views on the budget and the useful suggestions made by them should be seriously considered and incorporated in the budget document before its approval.

“Not allowing sufficient time (to councillors) is not only against the letter and spirit of the law but also a bad practise which must be reformed,” it said.

Under the local government rules, it says, taxation proposals must be published for feedback from the public much before the budget session of district council begins.

Councillors belonging to the opposition groups generally complain of the discriminatory attitude by the district government. This must change in a positive direction, as opposition councillors also represented people from their constituencies and the will of the people must be respected, it added.