PESHAWAR, July 9: Speakers at a seminar on Saturday demanded that the federal government should stop a tempering with the local government system and allow the provinces to make legislations according to their own needs. The seminar was organized by the Aurat Foundation on “Recent amendments into the Local Government Ordinance and their impact on the system” to educate social workers and former local councils’ representatives at the Peshawar Press Club.

Abdul Akbar Khan of the People’s Party Parliamentarians; Baz Mohammad Khattak, secretary of the local bodies and rural development; Iqbal Khalil, former deputy nazim, Peshawar; and Rukhshanda Naz of the Aurat Foundation deliberated on different aspects of the ordinance.

All the speakers were unanimous that it was a provincial subject and federal government should end its interference, otherwise it (local government system) would work as an extension of the federal system. They said the recent amendments had changed the spirit of the system authored by the National Reconstruction Bureau.

Mr Khan was of the view that as long as the creator of the system was occupying the apex administrative slot in the country, it would work as a political launching pad for him. But, with the disappearance of the creator the system would collapse, he added.

The PPP leader said the ‘Basic Democracies’ system introduced by Gen Ayub Khan collapsed with the end of his 10-year dictatorship and no one was talking about it. He said that a total of 17 amendments were made into the 1973 Constitution during the last 32 years, but 114 amendments had been made into the Local Government Ordinance, 2001.

Every law, he said, had an inner mechanism which provided it a sort of security against outer pressures. But, the local bodies’ law was void of it, Mr Khan added.

He opposed the no-confidence procedure against a district nazim and said if a nazim was elected by a simple majority, he should be removed by no-trust motion, through a simple majority.

He said the new changes into the ordinance had vested all powers with a chief minister to send any district nazim home. The Local Government Commission, he said, would work as a rubber stamp.

Defending the amendments made into the ordinance, Local Bodies Department secretary Baz Mohammad Khattak said a nazim could not pass an order on his own, only district coordinating officer was responsible to check that any order was legal or illegal. The DCO was not a monitor, but he was responsible to check the legal position of an order, he added.

“In our present system, nazims do not care of the chief minister. They think that they are above the provincial government and directly responsible to the federal government. It is a wrong approach. The chief minister can quash a resolution passed by the district council, which he deems is against the public interest or illegal,” Mr Khattak said.

He said the chief minister was bound to get his action against a nazim endorsed from the assembly, if it disapproved his action, it would be imperative for the chief minister to resign.

Former Peshawar deputy nazim Iqbal Khalil gave lauded the efforts of Gen Tanvir Hussain Naqvi, former chairman of the National Reconstruction Bureau, and his team.

He observed that Mr Naqvi had tried to empower general people by introducing the local government system.

Rukshanda Naz, director of the Aurat Foundation, said it was the duty of civil society groups to struggle for the provincial autonomy.