PESHAWAR, March 12: The 23 town municipal administrations established in 2002 are facing a financial crisis and may prove to be unviable, according to government functionaries.

"The future of the new town administrations hangs in the balance becausethey are becoming financially unviable," said an official.

Sources in the provincial local government and rural development department said the district governments were finding it difficult to deal with the problems of the new entities.

Though the new entities were being provided funds by the district governments, their financial problems were increasing, they said.

The creation of new towns left the district governments and existing towns municipal administration with less funds at their disposal.

The administrative expenses in the eight districts where the 23 towns were formed had risen, the sources said. "There has been a marked increasein utility charges and petroleum, stationary and other expenses because of the creation of new town administrations," they said.

"According to the Local Government Ordinance, 2001, a town municipal administration can only be created in urban areas and in the NWFP such entities can only exist in the Peshawar district," they said.

However, the last provincial government deviated from the National Reconstruction Bureau's plan and created 23 new entities in eight districts, including Tank, Lakki Marwat, Bannu, Kohat, Hangu, Nowshera and Abbottabad, which mainly consisted of rural areas, they said. Those districts, said the sources, had one tehsil each when the local government system was introduced in 2001.

Election to form the tehsil municipal administrations was not held in those districts and later the provincial government through an amendment to the NWFP LGO, 2001, created 23 towns there.

The towns were formed to establish a balance of power between the union council nazims and naib nazims in the districts, sources said. The union councils' naib nazims are members of the tehsil councils. "But in the eight districts, the tehsil councils had not been elected, depriving the naib nazims of their role as the members of the bodies, while the nazims as district councils' members acted beyond their defined role in the context of development."

The situation, said the sources, prompted the government to create new towns without holding elections in the eight 'single tehsil' districts.

In the new towns, said the sources, the municipal administrations' functions were being governed by rules and procedures different thanthose of the tehsil municipal administration under the LGO.

With the establishment of the town administrations, the number local governments in the second tier in the province increase to 61.

"The situation can hardly be rectified in the near future, because the entities cannot be scrapped without an amendment to the NWFP LGO, forwhich approval from President Pervez Musharraf would have to be sought in accordance with the 17th amendment to the Constitution," said an official.