MANSEHRA: The representatives of local bodies will meet Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan during his visit to Mansehra on March 26 and complain about the policies of his party’s government in the province against LG system.

“The day Imran Khan will reach here, we will hold LG convention against the denial of budgetary allocations to local governments by the provincial government. We will apprise him of the wrong policies of the provincial government against this (LG) system,” tehsil nazim Khurram Khan Swati told a news conference here on Saturday.

He said preparations for the convention to be held outside the Mansehra Press Club building had been finalised and that the local body representatives would attend it from across the district.

“This has been established now that the PTI government is hatching conspiracies against the LG system in the province. It has withheld over 80 per cent of the local bodies’ allocations during the last three years,” he said.

The nazim said 194 village and neighbourhood councils in Mansehra district had been given no budgetary funds during the current fiscal.

He wondered how the local government system would succeed in the province after the denial of budgetary allocations to the village and neighbourhood councils.

Also in the day, the Nazmeen Ittehad, a representative body of village and neighbourhood council nazims, met here with its president, Mohammad Fareed, in the chair.

Nazmeen Ittehad general secretary Basharat Ali Swati later told reporters that nazims and naib nazims and representatives of all 194 village and neighbourhood councils in the district would attend the March 26 LG Convention.

ELECTED UNOPPOSED: Four women lawyers were elected unopposed as members of the executive committee of the district bar association on Saturday ahead of the March 31 polls.

For the first time, a large number of women lawyers will exercise their right to vote in the elections for the offices of the association’s president, general secretary and treasurer.

Among 500 lawyers, who are eligible to cast vote in the polls, are 60 women.

Until the recent years, only a few women pursued law as a profession in the district. However, their number has increased considerably.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2018