PESHAWAR: Senior Minister for Local Government Inayatullah Khan on Tuesday said that the provincial government would review the local government system to remove flaws from it.

“In its present shape the LG system could backfire for the provincial government in the next general elections,” he said while endorsing the continued protest of the nazims against not devolving powers in the light of Constitution.

Addressing the Peshawar district council’s meeting, he further said that a high-level committee of ministers and secretaries of several government departments had been formed to review the law, rules of business and guidelines for the functioning of the three-tier local government system.

Inayatullah says body formed to review LG law and rules of business

“There are problems in implementation of the local government system,” he endorsed on the floor of the council. He said that the hands and feet of the elected nazims were tied under the guidelines framed by the planning and development department.

The senior minister said that he had requested the chief minister a month ago that review of the LG system was necessary. Changes would be introduced in the system in the light of suggestions of the committee, he said.

Peshawar district nazim Mohammad Asim Khan accepted on the floor of the council that the local government system introduced by retired General Pervez Musharraf was stronger and more effective than the current one. About the criticism of opposition councillors against the present LG system, the nazim said, “They, in fact, raised our voice as well.”

Asim Khan said that he had raised the issues confronting the LG system on every available forum, but in vain. “Finally, I informed PTI chief Imran Khan about the problems confronted by nazims,” he said.

He said that the local government representatives were told time and again by the provincial government that Rs43 billion would be devolved to the local bodies for the development schemes in the current financial year. However, he said, the financial year would complete next month while the provincial government had released only Rs17 billion.

Earlier, leader of the opposition Syed Zahir advocate said that nazims of the district, tehsil/town and village and neighbourhood councils were helpless before the bureaucracy. Addressing the district nazim, the opposition leader said that he couldn’t transfer a class-IV while deputy commissioners and district police officers were answerable to the district nazims in the previous LG system.

Arbab Akbar Nawaz of PTI said that there was a total confusion and neither the provincial government nor the nazims understood the LG system. The financial and administrative powers of nazims were usurped through rules of business when the PTI couldn’t win elections of nazims in many districts, he said.

Raham Dil Nawaz of PML-N said that it was good that the nazims of the ruling PTI had also realised the ineffectiveness of the local bodies system. “We have been crying for the last one year that no power is devolved to the local bodies, but the ruling PTI’s councillors were not accepting it,” he said.

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2016