PESHAWAR, Aug 14: The Fata directorate for local government is in a fix over the future of the existing agency councils in seven tribal agencies as there is no law to govern the bodies whose tenure would lapse by the end of the year, according to sources.

Officials confided to Dawn that the councils were constituted without any legal backing through an executive order by the NWFP governor for a term of three years.

They said the councils, completing their tenure in December, were elected for a single term and the directorate had no plan in hand about their future.

The government, said an official, was yet to give legal or constitutional cover to the agency councils formed in December 2003.

Sources said the directorate had sent a letter to NWFP Governor Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, seeking his opinion on whether to extend the tenure of the existing councils or nominate new members for them. They said the directorate was yet to receive comments from the Governor’s House.

When the government dropped plans to introduce the local government system in the tribal areas, the councils were established in each agency through an executive order. Instead of holding elections for the council each tribe was authorised to nominate representatives for them.

Under the scheme, 70 per cent of the seats in each council were filled by the respective tribes through nomination and 30 members were nominated by the political agent concerned who worked as the chairman of the council.

A total of 406 councillors had been elected in seven agencies and each councillor was being paid Rs5,000 as honorarium from the special funds of the political agents.

The councillors were empowered to assist political authorities in maintaining the law and order situation, identifying sites for development schemes and monitoring projects in their respective agencies.

Sources said that the future of the councils was in the doldrums, because of absence of legal cover and poor performance of the councillors.

“In fact agency councillors could not deliver, because of their antagonistic attitude and lack of support from the political agents. In many agencies monthly sessions of the councils were not convened by the political agents,” they said.

The present agency councils had drawn from the tribesmen striving for reforms in Fata on the ground that they had been demanding establishment of agency councils to be headed by elected agency nazims and formed through direct elections.

They believed that the establishment of these councils did not reflect the aspiration of the tribal people as the members were mostly nominated by the tribes and not elected.