PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Friday amended the Khasadar Force Act, 2019, regularising those working illegally for absentee Khasadar personnel.

The law was enforced last year for the reconstitution of the Khasadar Force functioning in the merged tribal districts and their absorption in the regular police force.

After the legislation, the government faced problems as there were many, who worked as illegal proxies for the enrolled Khasadars, many of whom had already died or worked somewhere else.

The amendment was tabled in the house by social welfare minister Hisham Inamullah.

The session was chaired by Deputy Speaker Mahmud Jan.

The people illegally serving in Khasadar Force has been defined in a new clause inserted in the law’s Section 2, after Clause (e), which states: “Iwazi” means a surrogate member of the Khasadar Force, who is actually performing duties in place of a member of the Khasadar Force and is getting full or split remuneration for the services rendered, whereas the salary is still drawn in name of the one in whose place he is performing such duties in the Khasadar Force.”

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The legalisation of the “Iwazi” proxies would pave the way to their merger with the regular police force.

The provincial government has so far merged many Khasadar officials with KP police into in the seven tribal districts after the region’s merger with KP, while the merger of the rest is in progress.

The house passed the amendment bill unanimously.

Mr Inamullah also proposed an amendment into the KP Local Government Act, 2013, to empower the KP chief minister to fill the vacancy in the Provincial Finance Commission in the absence of the tehsil local council’s chairman.

Through the proposed amendment, a provision has been added in Clause (i) sub-section (1) of Section 52, which states: “Provided that if elections are not held to the office of Chairman Tehsil Local Government, then the vacancy in the Provincial Finance Commission shall be filled by the Chief Minister.”

Besides other members in the PFC, there are also five chairmen of the tehsil local governments as members of the PFC.

The amendments were introduced to the law as elections for the tehsil local council were not in sight.

The provincial government is intending to hold local body elections in two phases.

In the first phase, it wants to hold elections for the village and neighbourhood councils to be held on a non-party basis, while in the second phase, elections will be held for the tehsil council on party basis.

Through a calling attention notice, MPA Ranjeet Singh drew the house’s attention towards non-implementation of the five per cent quota for the religious minorities in the in the government jobs.

He said many government departments were even unaware of the five per cent quota fixed by the provincial government for the minorities and didn’t mention it in the advertisement for jobs on the vacant posts.

Responding to the calling attention notice, labour minister Shaukat Yousafzai asked the mover to name departments not following government criteria so that the matter could be taken up with them.

He said all rights of religious minorities were protected and the minorities lived happily in the country.

“All problems of minorities would be resolved on priority basis,” he said.

The lawmakers also criticised the Peshawar Electric Supply Company over unscheduled loadshedding saying the outages had made the lives of the people miserable in hot weather.

They asked the speaker to arrange a meeting of MPAs with federal power minister Umar Ayub to resolve the issue and warned if that didn’t happen, they would launch extensive protests across the province.

The chair adjourned the session until next Monday due to incomplete quorum.

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2020