ISLAMABAD: Terming the proposed local government system to be introduced in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa “revolutionary”, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday said the time had come to defeat “vested interests and mafias” who would “definitely resist the change”.

Presenting salient features of the new local government system in the two PTI-ruled provinces to journalists, he said they were introducing the village or Panchayat system in Punjab after experiencing its good results in KP during the party’s last government there and after studying the best local government systems in developed countries.

The prime minister was accompanied by Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, KP Chief Minister Mehmood Khan and law ministers of the two provinces, besides members of his media team. Former secretary general of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Jahangir Tareen was also present on the occasion.

Though the prime minister did not identify the “vested interests”, he said those who had been getting benefits from the old system would definitely resist the implementation of new local government laws. He said nowhere in the world development funds were doled out to the members of parliament or provincial assemblies and the amount was directly provided to the local governments.

Speaking to journalists, Imran says federal government has become ‘bankrupt’ after 18th Amendment

Interestingly, it was a unique occasion to see the prime minister speaking for nearly 30 minutes without having a mention of the opposition parties or the alleged corruption by their leaders.

When a reporter sought Mr Khan’s comment on the opposition’s criticism of recent changes in the government’s economic team and allegation that the ruling PTI had handed over the country to the International Monetary Fund, he said he did not want to respond to the question as his reply would change the focus of the briefing from the real topic to politics.

Highlighting the main features of the proposed LG system, he said the elections at the village level would be held on a non-party basis as they did not want to divide the community at grass-roots level so that the people could make decisions on their own for the betterment of their area and prioritise their schemes after getting development funds.

The prime minister said there would be some 22,000 village councils to be called Panchayat councils in Punjab and some 4,000 in KP, adding that the elections at village and tehsil levels would help produce new leadership in the country. After introduction of this system, he said, all villages would become “self governing”.

He said there would be neighbourhood and tehsil or town councils in big towns and cities and the election of tehsil nazim would be held directly and on a party basis. Mr Khan said there would be direct elections of city mayors on the pattern of London, New York and Paris. The elections at the tehsil level and for mayors would be held on a party basis, adding that the mayor’s election would be a big exercise as the candidate for mayor office in Karachi would have to seek votes from nearly 20 million people.

After his election, the prime minister said, a mayor would appoint his own cabinet comprising professionals and technocrats having experience in town planning. “Our cities have become ruins. Lahore was once an organised city,” he said, adding that the mayor would be responsible for the uplift of cities and all civic agencies and departments like Water and Sanitation Agency would function under him.

Mr Khan said it was a “revolutionary local government system” through which the federal government would be handing over its powers to the local bodies for the first time. He said the old system was not delivering and the people had rejected it because it was of no use for them and the country. He said they had abolished district councils and the indirect election of nazim to avoid use of money and corruption.

The prime minister said they wanted the cities to generate their own funds as the new local bodies system would be viable only if the cities were able to generate revenues. He said presently Karachi, the country’s biggest city, was generating $21 million and Lahore $32m. On the other hand, he said, Tehran was generating $500m and Indian cities of Mumbai and Bangalore were generating revenue of $1 billion and $200m, respectively. Delhi and Mumbai did not get money from the provincial governments, he added.

He alleged that the previous government in Punjab had spent 57 per cent of the development funds of the entire province on Lahore alone. He regretted that presently some Rs90,000 per capita was being spent on development funds for Lahore while a only Rs2,400 was being spent on the development of Rajanpur, a far-flung area in south Punjab. Under the new system, he said, Rs140bn would directly go to the local bodies in Punjab, adding that 30pc of the development budget would go directly to the village councils.

Mr Khan said the provinces had failed to collect revenues under the 18th Constitution Amendment because of which they always looked towards the federal government which had become “bankrupt”. He was of the view that the viability of the 18th Amendment also depended on the success of revenue collection.

In reply to a question about the present economic conditions in the country, the prime minister said he had already stated that the first year would be difficult one. However, he said, there was no shortage of money in Pakistan and collection of Rs8 trillion was a difficult task. He said that despite recession, the Capital Development Authority received Rs11bn in the auction of plots in Islamabad.

Responding to a question, the prime minster rejected a perception that the new local government system was a step towards presidential system in the country and said: “I don’t know where these (rumours) are coming from.”

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2019