KARACHI: City council monitoring committees ineffective
By Azfar-ul-Ashfaque
KARACHI, Oct 2: Due to bureaucratic hurdles and little progress on devolution of a couple of departments, 33 house committees of the City Council have a very limited role in overseeing the functions of the city government, Dawn has learnt.
Members of both the treasury and the opposition agree that there is much room for improvement in the overall performance of the house committees.
Each individual in the house of 330 councillors is a member of one of the 33 house committees that monitor the functions of the city government at each level in order to evaluate the performance of every office in the context of achieving targets, responding to citizens’ difficulties, the efficient delivery of services and transparent functioning.
“A number of departments have not been devolved and under such circumstances a house committee cannot monitor the function of any department,” said the city naib nazim, Nasreen Jalil. “But rest of the committees including education, works and services, master-plan, health and transport are doing their job effectively.”
Ms Jalil, who is the convener of the City Council, told Dawn that compared to the first tenure of the Karachi city government (2001-2005), the functioning of the house committees has improved significantly. “House committee meetings are taking place regularly, the members take up several important departmental issues, give suggestions and then submit reports before the City Council,” she said, adding more reports were submitted during the last two years than during former Karachi Nazim Niamatullah Khan’s four-year tenure.
She said that during the first tenure, the City Council’s relevant house committee was never informed about any tender, “but the chairman of the Accounts Committee is now a part of the tendering process and the committee concerned has all the information required about the process.”
Unresolved issues
The proceedings of 33 house committees are lopsided not because of the dominance of treasury members but due to the absence of opposition members who submitted resignations on May 1 over a City Council incident during which opposition members, including women, were roughed up by certain treasury members.
“We are not attending the committees’ meetings because we have quit them,” said Saeed Ghani, the leader of the opposition in the City Council. However, he added that although five months have elapsed, their resignations have not yet been accepted by the convener.
By contrast, Ms Jalil maintained that some members of the opposition have started attending the house committee meetings. “The Haq Parast Panel enjoys a majority in the City Council and, therefore, they never face issues of a lack of quorum,” she said. “Even so, I personally want the opposition to return and participate in the proceedings, for which purpose I have approached opposition members a number of times but in vain.”
On the other hand, Mr Ghani argued that since even women were not safe during an open session of the City Council, members of the opposition could not possibly feel secure during the closed-door proceedings of the house committees. “We have demanded a judicial inquiry into the April 26 incident but they [treasury members] did not agree,” he told Dawn. “We have recently named four opposition members to be part of an eight-member inquiry team [four representatives from each side] but nothing positive has happened so far.”
Regarding the functioning of the house committees, Mr Ghani said that the committees’ real work lies in monitoring the functioning of departments without interfering in administrative functions. “But some of the chairmen misuse their offices and interfere in the normal functioning of the departments,” he alleged.
The leader of the opposition in the City Council complained that treasury members in the house committee did not take opposition members into their confidence and intentionally hid facts, thus making it very difficult for the opposition to monitor the functioning of their respective departments. “Under such circumstances, the house committee meetings have no credibility and the monitoring process lacks transparency,” he commented.
Bureaucratic hurdles
Some treasury members told Dawn on the condition of anonymity that bureaucratic hurdles were the main reasons behind slow pace of monitoring. “Very often, government officials hide information and the records of the utilisation of funds under one pretext or the other,” said a treasury member of the committee monitoring the functioning of the Revenue Group of Offices.
These members said that they had hardly any role to play since they were assigned the task of monitoring alone. “We are not authorised to stop any wrongdoing we may detect in any of the departments,” said one member. “We submit a report to the City Council and then the Council sends our findings or suggestions to the nazim who can act within 45 days. The role of the monitoring committee should be increased.”
Ms Jalil, however, stated that as the convener of the City Council, she wanted to take the opposition on board in order to run the house smoothly. “All opposition members should attend the proceedings of the house committees to critically review functioning that may be ignored by Haq Parast members,” she commented.
