KOHAT: District nazim Maulana Niaz Mohammad has said that district nazims from across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will call on Provincial Local Government Minister Inayatullah soon to take a final word from him about their responsibilities, salaries and perks.

Talking to Dawn on Tuesday, he also said that lack of awareness among the councillors of their responsibilities and budget and the undue delay in the settlement of issue of offices and appointment of secretaries showed the dismal performance of the local governments department.

The district nazim, who belongs to JUI-F, alleged that the PTI-government was making mockery of the LG system which was introduced for providing relief to the people by solving their problems. The people have been left frustrated, he added.

Kohat district nazim says KP govt making mockery of LG system

“Whenever we ask the chief minister and the local government minister they reply that their case of salaries and other perks is being processed by the finance department and the problem will be resolved soon,” said Maulana Niaz.

He said that presently they had no work to do during the council’s session. He said that 50 ADP schemes they had proposed had not been approved and the members could not start work in their constituencies. This has left the people deeply disappointed with the LG system, he said.

When contacted, an official of the local government, Kashif Rehman, said that Rs370.75 million had been released to 91 village and neighborhood councils of the district.

He said that the proposed schemes would be submitted to a committee for scrutiny and then presented before the assistance commissioner who was the chairman of the council and it was his discretion whether to approve or reject any scheme.

He said that the appointment of secretaries would be completed soon. He said that the job of the village and neighbourhood councils was to suggest improvement and maintenance of development work and submit report to the authority concerned after every three months.

However, he said that there was no such progress, as the members did not know anything about their responsibilities.

Answering a question, he said that workshops were being organised for the members to acquaint them with their responsibilities, but their response was not good.

The executive district officer finance, Wahidur Rehman, told Dawn that Rs250 million had been released by the government for the 50 members of the district council and all of them had suggested development programmes which were under process of approval.

About the salaries of district and tehsil nazims, he said that it was the job of provincial finance department.

ARRESTED: The Kohat police arrested 37 suspects and recovered illegal weapons and drugs from their possession here on Tuesday.

DPO Sohaib Ashraf said that the police had also arrested 10 proclaimed offenders, including Zar Moeen, Sajid Zaman, Mohammad Shakir, Naveed Ahmed, Yousuf, Farmanuddin, Janab Gul, Irfan, Idrees and Zahir Shah.

The weapons recovered included two Kalashnikovs, three shot guns, two repeaters, two rifles, seven pistols and four kilogrammes of hashish.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2016