PESHAWAR: Although there would be no district governments in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after a month, yet the district councils have been passing annual budgets for the ongoing fiscal amid legal lacuna.

“What is the justification of passing the district governments’ budgets for 17 departments, which would not exist at district level rather seven among them would be further devolved to tehsil level while the remaining 10 departments would be returned to the provincial government,” officials and experts on local government told Dawn.

The tenure of the existing three-tier local bodies including district, town/tehsil and village and neighbourhood councils will complete on August 28 while the new local government system will consists of tehsil local government besides village and neighbourhood councils.

District tier of local govt system will cease to exist after one month

The provincial government amended drastically KP Local Government Act, 2013 a few months ago and abolished the district tier while retained the tehsil and village/neighbourhood councils.

The experts said that there would have been some logic in passing the district budgets if district governments were to stay. They said fresh local bodies’ elections would be held within three months after the end of the tenure of the existing bodies.

“So far the district councils of Torghar, Battagram, Haripur, Swabi and Nowshera have passed the budgets while budget preparations are underway in the rest of the districts,” said officials in local government department.

They said that finance department while intimating the districts about their share in the development funds under Provincial Finance Commission award also committed blunder by directing the district governments to pass their annual budgets.

“District/tehsil governments should ensure approval of their budgets for the financial year 2019-20 by due time in 2019,” says a letter sent by the finance department to all districts along with funds breakup. The subject of the letter is: Estimated resources to be transferred to the local governments for the financial year 2019-20.

Shangla district nazim Niaz Ahmed told Dawn that he would present district budget on Tuesday (tomorrow) because the district government was still intact.

When his attention was drawn towards abolishment of the district governments and non-existence of any department at district level in the new setup, he said that it was a fact that they were facing many legal ambiguities in the system.

“I had also raised the legal issues during a meeting of Provincial Finance Commission but government representatives present on the occasion had no reply,” said Mr Ahmed, who is also a member of PFC.

He alleged that the provincial government was not interested in the local government elections after completion of the tenure of the existing one.

He said that the amended law was already challenged in Peshawar High Court by Jamaat-i-Islami and Awami National Party while KP Local Council Association also decided to challenge it because devolution of power was incomplete without district governments.

“The ruling PTI wanted to utilise Rs16 billion development funds of district governments through MPAs and chief minister,” he alleged.

Talking to Dawn, one of the assistant directors of local governments termed the passage of the district budgets as futile exercise. “Who will utilise the Rs16 billion development funds meant for the district governments under PFC award after the abolishment of the district governments,” he questioned.

He said that the passage of those budgets was in violation of Section 33 (3) of KP Local Government Act, 2013 which stated: “Where a new local government is to take over during a financial year as a result of fresh elections, the outgoing local government shall not spend funds or make commitments for any expenditure, under any demand for grant or appropriation, in excess of eight percent per mensem of the budgeted funds for remainder of its term in office.”

Asked how the salaries of the government employees working in the devolved departments would be paid if budgets were not passed, the official said that salary and non-salary budget for three months could be released under the KP finance rules in absence of the local councils.

Minister for Local Government Shahram Khan Taraki was not available for comments.

However, a senior official of the local government department told Dawn that the district governments couldn’t pass budget for 2019-20. He said that local government department prepared instructions, directing all district governments to avoid the passage of the development funds. He said that the instructions in that regard were moved to chief minister through a summary for approval.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2019