KARACHI, June 26: The main thrust of a workshop organised by the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) here on Tuesday on ‘Devolution in Pakistan’ was that good things are happening with the Local Government Ordinance (LGO), introduced in 2001, but these positive achievements need to be publicised to make the public aware of the changes.

This was the gist of Mr Naeemul Haq’s (a senior member of the NRB) presentation. The city nazim was also due to address the workshop but because of the prevailing rain emergency situation, he could not attend the proceedings.

Speaking to a small group consisting mostly of print and electronic media journalists, Mr Haq said that access to information was the right of citizens and the local government system is based on giving citizens their rights.

He said that the LG system is encouraging but not perfect, adding that the municipality is the core of the new system. The NRB representative observed that there was a lot of criticism of the TMAs (tehsil municipal administrations), with people saying that they had done nothing but increase bureaucracy. But he insisted that bureaucracy was simply a method of administration and could be a good thing, depending on how it was used.

Mr Haq was of the view that the role of the provincial governments had changed, as now their job was setting policies, coordination and overseeing checks and balances.

He claimed that the local government system was on the right track and in line with international norms.

He concluded by saying that no one has tried to understand the new system as information regarding it is not readily available.