RAWALPINDI: Fourteen years after the local government system was introduced by former president Pervez Musharraf, financial matters of the districts will be

shifted back to Lahore where the provincial finance department will make the district budgets for the fiscal year 2015-16.

The Punjab government is replacing Musharraf’s local government system with a new one and is reviving commissionerate system from July 1, two months before the local government elections.

Under the local government system introduced by Gen Musharraf in 2001, the city district government prepared its budget and dealt with all the financial matters.

However, under the Punjab Local Government Act 2013, the provincial finance department will prepare the budget for the district in Lahore.

The district administration will be led by the deputy commissioner, who will not be answerable to the District Council chairman and the mayor.

With the start of the new fiscal year, the district coordination officer will be renamed as the deputy commissioner, additional district collector revenue as the additional deputy commissioner revenue and the additional district collector general will be renamed as the additional deputy commissioner general.

Under new LG system, the Punjab finance department will prepare the district budgets for fiscal year 2015-16

The district finance department will be abolished as the financial matters of Rawal and Potohar towns will be looked after through the finance department of Rawalpindi Metropolitan Corporation (RMC) while the District Council will look after the affairs of the district after local government elections in September.

For the interim period from July to September, the commissioner will run the affairs of the division, deputy commissioner will look after the district, a senior CDGR official told Dawn.

However, he said eight towns of Rawalpindi district would prepare their budgets for the next fiscal year before June 30 and the coming local government and the municipal committees of tehsils will give final approval to them in September.

He said the provincial government had already formed a committee to hand over the assets to the Rawalpindi Metropolitan Corporation and the District Council. He said the commissioner and deputy commissioner were directly answerable to the Punjab government and the local mayor and chairman Zila Council had nothing to do with the affairs of the district administration.

The role of the mayor would be limited to urban union councils. “The provincial government has already separated the water, sanitation departments. The Water and Sanitation Agency will be responsible for water-related matter, Parks and Horticulture Authority for parks and greenbelts and Rawalpindi Municipal Waste Company for sanitation. Education and health authorities will be formed under the provincial government,” he said.

“The other services such as streetlights, encroachments, building plans, parking plazas or sites and the construction of streets will come under the ambit of Rawalpindi Metropolitan Corporation and Municipal Committees.” He said under the national action plan, the local police worked in collaboration with the Pakistan Army. “The Punjab home department wanted to keep the police away from the elected representatives of the people,” he said.

A senior leader of the PML-N told Dawn that the provincial government made Local Government Act 2013 with amendments in 2014 to counter the public support of PTI in Punjab.

“If the PTI or any other political party wins the local government elections in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Multan, it will create problems for the provincial government.

So it (PML-N) tried to control the local bureaucracy,” he said.

When contacted, District Coordination Officer Sajid Zafar Dall confirmed that the DCOs would be renamed as DCs from July 1. He also said financial matters of the district would be shifted to Lahore.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2015

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