PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to ban the renaming of the buildings, roads and other facilities named after the personalities of national and provincial stature in order to prevent controversies and litigation.

The Performance Management and Reforms Unit at the chief secretary’s office has prepared a policy in this regard, which will be notified soon, the relevant officials told Dawn.

The officials said the provincial policy was aimed at streamlining the process and regularising the existing mechanism through which roads and buildings were named.

The three-page policy document available with Dawn notes that over the last 15 years, a haphazard increase has been observed in the naming and renaming of buildings and roads by both ‘authorised and unauthorised’ authorities.

It adds that there’re many instances about the people’s representatives and the people themselves naming public properties on one or another pretext or without following legal procedure.

The document says this practice has been so often and unnoticed that it results into the issues like changes in revenue records, public and institutional inconvenience in terms of postal addresses and identification, variation in information with the Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Division, Election Commission of Pakistan and general mapping.

Officials say move will prevent controversies, litigation

“Provincial government does not have any policy to this effect, except approval of the competent authority; therefore, framing of laid down procedure is imperative for regularize the process in the best public interest,” it noted, adding that for the purpose, guidelines of federal establishment code are being adopted.

Under the policy, public assets have been classified into two categories of district and provincial assets.

The district assets would include schools, basic health units, rural health centers, district roads and tehsil administration properties, while the provincial government assets would include category D and above hospitals, colleges, universities, police stations/lines, A-category sports facilities, rest houses, tourist spots, roads, bridges and chowks owned by the communication and works department, KP Highways Authority and irrigation department.

Under the policy, no district or provincial asset would be named after a government servant or public representative while he/she is alive. Also no assets would be named after a foreigner without the approval of the federal government.

The policy says the public assets could be named after the founder of the nation, persons who remained at the forefront of the freedom movement, national and provincial personalities with unblemished record, heroes who laid down their lives in the defense of the country. In addition to this arts and cultural institutes could be named after dead artists of national fame, while the same principal will be followed in case of sports facilities, archeology museum, educational institutions, libraries, scientific and technical institutions, principal donors of any building or institution built for charity and living and dead heads of friendly states.

The provincial and district assets will be named after following a proper procedure and all recommendations will have to be approved on a summary by the chief minister.

The administration department shall be case processing department for all such recommendations forwarded by other departments and districts.

At district level, the district council will recommend the naming of a public asset and the relevant deputy commissioner will forward the same to the local government secretary for onward submission to the adminstra6tion department.

At the provincial level, such requests from the departments will be placed before the provincial cabinet for approval followed by the chief minister’s nod.

Also, a regularisation committee headed by the additional chief secretary will regularise the facilities already named in other than prescribed manner after the collection of district wise reports from across the province.

PM&RU deputy coordinator Fahd Ikram Qazi told Dawn that there were no guidelines in place, which led them to issue the policy.

He said naming and renaming of assets without due procedures were causing political, religious and sectarian issues.

“The policy will be implemented following the approval of the chief secretary,” he said.

Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2017