PESHAWAR, May 28: The new National Finance Commission award for the next five-year term starting from July 1, 2002, is likely to be put in place before the October elections, official sources told Dawn here on Tuesday.

“Federal government wants the new award to be in place before the country holds the next general elections in October,” senior government functionaries said on the request of anonymity.

Islamabad, said sources, felt that it would be much easier for it to establish the new system of distributing resources among the federating units and the federation before the October polls instead of leaving the job to the up-coming political government.

A reference to the effect was also made by Director General Good Governance, National Reconstruction Bureau, Wasiullah, during his presentation at a seminar here on Tuesday.

“Before general elections we would be having new financial system at the federal level,” said the NRB official while highlighting the NRB’s performance and achievements specifically in terms of evolving the devolution of power plan.

However, senior officials of the provincial government in a separate discussion with this scribe described the intending move of evolving the new NFC before October as an attempt to make the provinces agree to the new system in ‘forced manner’.

“If Islamabad wants to develop the new NFC award with mutual consent of the federating units then it would really need to speed up the process of negotiations,” official sources said.

The seminar, titled “Reflection on local government ordinance, 2001” and arranged under the UNDP-sponsored Essential Institutional Reforms Operationalization Programme (EIROP), discussed at length various aspects of the devolution of power plan, issues relating to the good governance, financial and administrative problems facing the new local government system and possible measures that needed to be taken to improve the functioning of the newly set up third tier of the governance — local government.

The district coordination officer Nowshera and Nazim Mansehra highlighted in detail the problems faced by them while exercising their duties under the local government ordinance 2001, and sought powers to strengthen their respective offices what they termed as essentially required to help them discharge their duties effectively.

The two also underline a series of issues relating to financial and development planning and budget making.

The seminar participants, drawn from the provincial government departments, local governments’ functionaries and elected representatives, international donor and policy making agencies and representatives of Sindh, Punjab and NRB, were divided into three working groups.

The working groups identified problems relating to administrative, financial and institutional matters and suggested measures to improve the state of affairs at the district government level.

Earlier, provincial minister for local government Athar Minallah and minister for finance Farid Rehman also addressed the seminar, highlighting the hallmarks of the district government system.

NWFP governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah was the chief guest at the opening session.