September 17, 2008	Wednesday	Ramazan 16, 1429

PESHAWAR, Sept 16: International donor agencies which supported the local bodies system of the previous regime will respect the present government’s decision about its future.

“They (donors) are watching the developments and they are likely to go by the government policy,” a senior government official told Dawn.

The federal government has constituted a committee to prepare proposals for amending or repealing the Local Government Ordinance of 2001.

The committee, headed by the federal secretary of the local government division, has sought opinion of the provinces.

The NWFP has already submitted its proposals, seeking restoration of the commissioner’s office and replacement of the system with the one introduced by Gen Ziaul Haq in 1979.

The federal government invited international donor and lending agencies to a conference in Islamabad on Aug 18 to present their opinion and reservations to the proposal to repeal or amend the local bodies system.

An official who had attended the conference said the donor agencies expressed reservations about scrapping the system but indicated that they would follow the government’s decision.

When contacted for their official position on the issue, senior executives of some of the donor agencies avoided giving any opinion at this time.

In response to an email, Asian Development Bank’s country director Peter L. Fedon said that decentralisation support programme funded by the ADB was a major support for devolution focussing on reforms in areas of decentralisation, fiscal restructuring and local governance.

The ADB, he said, had provided about $300 million for the programme which aimed at improving local representation, accountability and efficiency in service delivery to the people.

“It is certainly the government’s decision how it wants to deal with this reform agenda,” Mr Fedon said.

Before taking a decision, he said, the government would probably assess the achievements and challenges based on the experience of six years of the system with emphasis on the issues of accountability and local ownership and the need to improve delivery of basic services using the best possible modalities.

The World Bank’s country office did not respond to similar emails.

An official source said that since more than 25 foreign-funded projects aimed at strengthening decentralisation were in progress, it was unlikely that the government could afford to scrap the local bodies system when the economy needed more foreign exchange.

He said the government also did not have an alternative system and, therefore, the LGO-2001 would be amended and not repealed.