RAWALPINDI: Six months after the local bodies elections were held on December 5 last year, Punjab’s 36 districts are still without a local government, with the bureaucracy running the district administration affairs instead of public representatives.

The process of electing mayors, district chairmen and elections on reserved seats is also incomplete and Punjab government seems to not be making an effort to form a local government in the province.

Seeing no sign of power being handed over to elected representatives of municipal corporations, committees and district councils, local administration has started the process of preparing the annual budget for the fiscal year 2016-17.

And even though drafting the annual budget for their respective governments in districts and tehsils was to be the responsibility of elected union council chairmen and mayors, the provincial government has allowed the local bureaucracy to finalise the budget.

A senior official of the local administration told Dawn that the provincial government had asked for the budget to be prepared according to the routine because it had no plans to form local governments yet.

Six months on, local govt still not formed, bureaucracy running administrative affairs

All the branches have been asked to send their budget proposals to the finance department of the town municipal administration, he said, adding that it will be difficult for various departments to draft a proposal within a month.

Awami Muslim League (AML) president and MNA Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Dawn that the government had not yet allocated funds for the local government which, he said, will not be formed in the current year.

“PML-N does not want to share power in the provinces with public representatives, even if they have been handpicked. Six months after the elections, the elected members are sitting in their houses, doing nothing,” he said.

“The PML-N government’s days in the centre and province are numbered and they are fighting for survival which is why they don’t have time to form the local government,” he argued.

Talking to Dawn, PTI spokesperson Naeemul Haq said it will be difficult for Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to share power with elected representatives after eight years of running the affairs of the province without interference.

He said the Sharif family had always run the affairs of the party and governments.

“PTI delegated power to local governments in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and even members of opposition parties who won elections are running the affairs of their respective districts and tehsils,” he said.

The Sindh and Punjab governments should delegate power to elected representatives, he said.

“We have asked legal advisors to raise the matter of forming local governments in Punjab in the courts as well,” he added.

It is strange that the PML-N won the local elections and is still reluctant to hand over power, the PTI leader said.

Former PML-N MNA Hanif Abbasi said that the local governments in the province will be formed after Ramazan and the process will take over two or three months.

Cases regarding the elections are pending in the courts and need to be cleared, he argued, adding that the provincial government will not waste time while delegating power to elected representatives once the cases are cleared.

Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2016