PESHAWAR: The Frontier government has worked out an administration plan for running the local bodies, through administrators, after their proposed abolishment.

The proposed plan had been prepared keeping in view the dissolution of the existing local bodies as decided in a recent meeting of the Inter Provincial Coordination Committee chaired by Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, an official told Dawn.

The Ministry of Inter Provincial Coordination had sent a summary to the prime minister, seeking abolishment of local bodies and allowing provinces to appoint administrators in place of nazims till the next local bodies are formed.

'We are expecting a green signal at any moment,' said the official. He said that the administration plan had been proposed enabling the provincial authorities to handle the transitional phase appropriately.

According to the administration plan, district coordination officers in 24 districts of the province would act as administrators of their respective districts. The executive district officer (Finance and Planning) would be responsible for reconciliation of accounts, while district planning officer would act as focal person for the planning and development process, the official said.

Similarly the District Development Committee will serve as forum for approval of local development schemes including those for the municipalities and unions.

Budget for the local governments, during transitional period, would be approved by the local government and rural development department.

NWFP had 55 tehsils and towns municipal administration, which under the transitional plan had been divided in four categories, the official added.

These include municipalities at Peshawar and divisional headquarters of Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Abbottabad, Swat and Mardan, heavy charge municipalities at Haripur, Mansehra, Batkhela, Nowshera, Swabi, Teimergara and light charge municipalities.Of the four towns of provincial capital, two each would be governed by a grade 18 officer to be appointed as administrator. Separate administrators would be appointed for the areas falling under heavy charge municipalities, while the areas under light charge municipalities would be governed by local functionaries through additional charge basis. The administrators would be responsible for asset management, resource generation, personnel management, consolidating development input, enforcing financial discipline, improvement in service delivery and delimitation.

For coordination and oversight arrangement, the official said, divisional commissioners would be given additional responsibilities in the transitional phase of the local bodies functioning.

The commissioners, as per the plan, would review the performance of the administrators, oversee implementation of local governments’ development plans and monitor resource generation and utilisation in local governments.

The proposed administration plan also envisaged constitution of a Divisional Advisory Council to be headed by a nominee of the chief minister, while members of provincial assembly from the division and divisional commissioner would be its members.