LAHORE: Chief Minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi and the administrative secretaries have agreed to revive executive magistracy system, giving magistrates summary powers to impose one to three years imprisonment on those committing overcharging as a repeated offence.

The chief minister was holding a maiden meeting with the administrative secretaries at Darbar Hall of the Civil Secretariat on Monday.

Speaking on the occasion, he said the civil bureaucracy should propose a feasible mechanism to amend the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to revive the magistracy system for controlling prices effectively.

The administrative secretaries, it is learnt, observed that there were continuous complaints of overcharging on prices of daily-use items fixed by the government and the writ of the government was being challenged.

Magistrates to be empowered to jail offenders; CM holds maiden meeting with admin secretaries

The meeting was told that there were no trained price control inspectors as out of 50 price control inspectors in Lahore, only three of them were found to have read the Price Control Act 2006 wherein some amendments, including summary powers of imposing one to three year imprisonment on repeated offence, were included. On the first offence, the offender could be fined and also sentenced to one year imprisonment. However, the meeting was told that the inspectors were only imposing fines or in some cases registering the first information reports (FIRs) that were ineffective as the fine allowed the offender to keep on overcharging.

The CM asked Chief Secretary (CS) Abdullah Khan Sumbal to constitute a committee and take inputs from Secretary Irrigation Rai Manzoor Nasir who had raised the issue of overcharging.

The magistracy system under the Price Control and Prevention of Profiteering and Hoarding Act 1977 was abolished by former President Gen Pervez Musharraf in 2001.

The meeting discussed wastage of resources in departments and the CM asked all administrative secretaries to review working of their departments to find out ways to save resources.

He directed the CS to give short-term targets to the administrative secretaries and continue monitoring completion of targets and address teething problems.

Mr Elahi said performance of officers would be reviewed vis-à-vis development projects and asked the secretaries to ensure proper utilisation of development funds to achieve results. He issued guidelines for early completion of uplift schemes and achievement of targets.

The chief minister emphasised that a decision on the summary or file should be made within two days.

“An implementation mechanism will be determined to ensure speedy disposal of the summary or file at the Chief Minister’s Office,” he said and added that the secretaries should recommend public welfare projects. He declared that officers’ tenure on their postings would be ensured to help them deliver the services wholeheartedly.

It may be mentioned that protection of tenure of officers was one of two main reasons that frustrated chief secretary Kamran Ali Afzal who went on leave. The other reason that haunted Mr Afzal was the posting of officers in violation of merit.

The CM urged the bureaucracy to work as a unified team and asked the officers to convey to him if he faltered in any cases. He asked the administrative secretaries to share with him even their personal problems that could be resolved.

The chief minister wanted the administrative secretaries to observe an open-door policy so that people could visit them for their problems; however, he agreed to the suggestion of the bureaucracy that the secretaries’ offices would be open for the public from 9:30am to 11am on a daily basis. The CM stressed that the secretaries should not schedule their meetings during the time meant for the public.

Mr Elahi also emphasised that the problems of people from outside Lahore should be resolved in their cities so that they won’t have to come all the way to the provincial capital.

He said more work should be done in south Punjab than before. He said the scope of land centres would be expanded up to the Qanoongo level to benefit the farmers. He sought more reforms in the archaic prison system.

Mr Elahi announced that teachers’ training programmes would be made more efficient to improve educational standards and a law would soon be promulgated to purge educational institutions of drugs.

CS Abdullah Sumbal assured the CM that the secretaries and heads of institutions would strive for public welfare wholeheartedly and resources would be used to speed up development.

The administrative secretaries of the South Punjab Secretariat from Multan and Bahawalpur participated through a video link while the secretaries of local government and industries departments also attended the meeting from field through a video link.

Former federal minister Moonis Elahi, Principal Secretary to CM Muhammad Khan Bhatti, SMBR Zahid Akhtar Zaman, Additional Chief Secretary Asadullah Khan, former principal secretary to CM GM Sikandar and administrative secretaries of 42 departments attended the meeting.

Published in Dawn, September 20th, 2022