JHANG, Sept 10: Scores of PML councillors, labourers, women councillors and peasants of rural areas of Jhang tehsil have expressed their disapproval to any nomination for the tehsil nazim slot, who neither belongs to rural area nor has any link to agriculture. The objection was raised in a meeting in Pirkot Sadhana village, which was attended by 100 councillors of 12 union councils of Massan, Qadirpur and Sadar areas.

The participants reacted to the proposed nomination of an industrialist from the Jhang municipality area as the official candidate for the tehsil nazim slot.

They also formed an action committee and authorized it to contact councillors of other tehsil areas and mobilize public opinion to thwart any such move by the PML high command to impose upon them someone against their aspirations. “Rural areas have their own peculiar problems which are entirely different from the ones faced by people living in urban localities.

Any trader or industrialist belonging to the city is not supposed to be having an insight into the complexity of multifarious problems faced by the village people”, they said.

The Jhang tehsil, the largest in the district, comprises 55 union councils, only 13 fall within the municipal limits of Jhang while the remaining in its vast rural areas.

Therefore, an overwhelming majority of Jhang tehsil, live in rural areas. There is a marked difference in lifestyle and social environment between the two different classes of the people.

Similarly, both classes of people have different types of local government systems, that is, district councils for rural areas and municipal corporations, municipal committees and town committees for the urban area.

A member of the action committee said in the local elections of 2000, a candidate of the urban area was elected tehsil nazim primarily because of the stand he had taken against sectarian outfit.

He said since the tehsil nazim was not conversant to problems faced by the people of rural areas, he had failed to win even a single nazim seat outside Jhang city, although he had been quite successful in the municipality area.