PESHAWAR, June 12: Lack of a working relationship between the elected representatives and government officials has badly affected service delivery in the NWFP, it is learnt.

Officials at the establishment department told Dawn that nazims and district coordination officers (DCOs) in various districts had locked horns over a number of issues, which led the former to request the provincial government to take action against DCOs involved.

They said the elected representatives in these districts felt uneasy while working with the DCOs mainly because of non-cooperation on the part of DCOs in undertaking their obligations.The civil servants, however, complain that the elected representatives often violate the prescribed rules and regulations and exert political pressure on them to get their works done. They said that it created a deadlock at the district level.

The most recent case of lack of coordination is of Karak district where district Nazim Rehmat Salam Khattak, at a press conference on Monday, asked the DCO, district police officer and tehsildar (revenue officer) to leave the district.

Sources told Dawn that the dispute cropped up when an official of the revenue department lodged an FIR against the district naib nazim for allegedly interfering in official work.

The government functionaries, the nazim said, did not consider the elected representatives as real administrator of the devolved district departments though it was clearly mentioned in the Local Government Ordinance (LGO-2001). As per the LGO-2001, the district nazim writes the Annual Confidential Report of the DCO which is then counter-signed by the chief secretary.

Meanwhile, the district Nazim had a meeting with Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani on Tuesday and apprised the CM of his grievances. The chief minister, the sources said, assured the nazim of resolving the issue through mediation.

Similar disputes have also been reported in Hangu, Tank, Mardan and Swabi districts where the elected representatives approached the provincial government on different occasions to seek transfer of the civil servants.

Although the provincial government tried to resolve the issue through mediation, a working relationship between them is yet to develop.

The officials at the establishment department told Dawn that building a better working relationship between the elected representatives and government officials was essential for the success of devolution plan.

They said the provincial government was still finding it difficult to achieve this which was evident from the fact that recently most of the posts of DCOs had been filled by junior officers as senior officers of grade 20 were reluctant to serve as DCOs.

They said there was no shortage of officers who could be posted against such posts, but senior officers did not want to go to districts because after the devolution of power the DCO was no more considered as an authoritative post as was the case in the past.

The officials explained that one of the major reasons behind the poor working relationship between the district bureaucracy and elected representatives was that most of them were inexperienced and thus did not known how to cultivate a sense of partnership.

Since the establishment of district governments, the provincial government has been allocating Rs963 million for local bodies’ development programmes annually, but actual spending on development projects remained not more than 20 per cent.