September 26, 2008	Friday	Ramazan 25, 1429

PESHAWAR, Sept 25: The NWFP government is reviving the defunct office of commissioner and revenue divisions to effectively handle issues of law and order, coordination, monitoring and oversight, it is learnt.

NWFP Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti was given a briefing on the proposed plan last week, which if implemented would virtually redundant the local governance system introduced by former president Pervez Musharraf and revive the basic governance structure of pre-devolution era in the province.

Appointment of regional coordination officers (RCOs) early this year in NWFP was the beginning of a gradual revival of the defunct commissioners’ offices, which was aimed at dealing with the issues of coordination between the districts and tribal agencies and receding writ of the government and improving the governance.

These officers were looking after the Bannu, Kohat, Peshawar, Malakand and Hazara regions and their adjoining tribal belts, as all the district coordination officers, political agents and deputy inspector general of police were required to report to them.

The NWFP cabinet in a meeting held on July 28 had decided to strengthen these newly created institutions of RCOs to ensure expeditious disposal of government business for welfare of the people by providing executive authority for guidance and monitoring.

To materialise this decision, the government had given go ahead signal for re-designating the RCOs as commissioners and reviving of the defunct revenue divisions under The West Pakistan Land Revenue Act, 1967, an official told Dawn here on Thursday.

The official said that deletion of Section 18-A from the Land Revenue Act 1967 will enable the government to re-constitute revenue divisions in the province besides re-designating the Revenue Appellate Authorities as additional commissioners to be working under divisional commissioners.

Before the implementation of devolution of power plan, additional commissioners and commissioners were authorised to dispose of revenue and land related cases and appeals, however, after devolution these powers were delegated to revenue department.

The official opined that the devolution plan increased the complexity and caused institutional inertia, redundancy and ineffectiveness, which had made governance difficult in NWFP, where the situation was quite different from rest of the country because of its proximity with tribal belt and growing militancy.

Under the proposed plan, the official said, the NWFP government had decided to revive the defunct offices of commissioners by changing the nomenclature of RCOs as commissioners besides giving them more powers.

According to a model of the office of divisional commissioners presented before the provincial cabinet, the officer to be appointed on the post would lead a revenue division each comprising five to six districts. The proposed responsibilities of the commissioners will be general administration and coordination, development, finance and land administration.

The chief minister would discuss the proposed plan with the prime minister in a meeting on Sept 28 convened by the later for amending the existing local bodies system, the official said.