MULTAN: The district government is going to propose to the provincial government to carve out a new tehsil in Multan district which already has four tehsils namely Jalalpur Pirwala, Shujabad, City and Saddar.

Sources told Dawn the new tehsil, Multan Cantt, would consist of five qanungois with 31 patwar circles and 125 mauzajaat.

The new tehsil will be formed by making adjustments to the existing areas of city and Saddar tehsils. City tehsil currently has three qanungois, 23 patwar circles and 64 mauzajaat while Saddar teshil has 11 qanungois, 104 patwar circles and 278 mauzajaat.

With the creation of new tehsil, city teshil will be left with five qanungois, 34 patwar circles and 96 mauzajaat while Saddar tehsil will have four qanungois, 46 patwar circles and 121 mauzajaat.

The district government will adjust some of the staff in the new tehsil by itself but it is going to request the provincial government to create one seat each of assistant commissioner, assistant/head clerk, stenographer/PA, senior clerk and computer operator, four seats of junior clerk, two seats of driver and four seats of naib qasid besides upgrade of a post of naib tehsildar to tehsildar.

The estimated cost for total 16 posts is Rs4.4 million while one time expenditure on the purchase of furniture, equipment, vehicles and other items has been estimated at Rs3 million.

District Coordination Officer (DCO) Nadir Chattha said the district government would request Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif for the creation of new tehsil.

“The area of Saddar tehsil is almost half of the total area of the district where a single assistant commissioner faces difficulties to achieve revenue targets, conduct surveys and khasra girdawari besides wheat procurement while the city tehsil has become thickly populated and it is also expanding rapidly where the district administration is facing the issues like price hike, encroachments, adulteration in eatables, illegal canting and decanting of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), processions and arrangement of special bazaars,” he said.

The DCO said that for the equal distribution of workload and improvement in efficiency, new boundaries of all the three tehsils would comprise of equal number of urban and rural areas.

Published in Dawn, December 12th, 2016