KARACHI, Feb 7: The Sindh government palns to introduce drastic changes to the provincial local government department, redefining its functions under the devolution of the power program.

The entire department is going to be restructured with the deletion of the names of the public health engineering, rural development and Katchi Abadis departments and their existing functions from the Rules of Business 1986 as envisaged in the Sindh Local Government Ordinance 2001.

The newly consolidated local government (LG) department would be assigned specific functions, said Dewan Muhammad Yousuf Farooqui, provincial minister for local government, labour, transport & industries, while talking to PPI on Thursday.

He said the LG department would now act as the secretariat of the provincial local government commission, besides dealing with the establishment matters of the Sindh Councils Unified Grade Service (SCUG), non-SCUG (public health engineering, rural development, housing and other departments) employees of the LG department working with different tiers of local government.

It would also coordinate with all the tiers of the local government, impart training to the elected councillors and government functionaries at the Sindh Local Government & Rural Development Academy, coordinate with the federal government and donor agencies and provide interface between them. The supervision, coordination and monitoring of foreign-aided and mega projects of water supply, drainage and sanitation at the inter-district and the provincial levels would also be the responsibility of LG department, the minister added.—PPI