PESHAWAR, June 1: Town-1 Nazim Haroon Bilour has said that union councils will be vested with the powers to collect professional and water taxes by July, empowering people’s representatives at grass-roots.

He was speaking at the Peshawar Press Club’s ‘Nazmeen Forum’ here on Saturday.

The Nazim said this devolution of powers would help reduce the hardships of taxpayers, and affirm the confidence of elected councillors in the new system.

The union councils, he said, had already been empowered to issue birth and death certificates in their respective areas. They were also allowed to charge fees for certificates, which would be used in welfare schemes at local level, he added.

Mr Bilour urged the government to early delegate all those powers to the tehsil municipal authorities which had been referred in the Local Government Ordinance. All income-generating offices located in Town-1 also should be handed over to them, he added.

He said that huge funds were allocated this year for the provision of potable water; for upgrading and repairing of the dilapidated roads and street lights in various union councils. At present, there were 175 tube-wells in his town, but by the end of December the number would be around 210, he said.

He dispelled the impression that he was giving any preference in allocation of uplift schemes to the union councils whose affairs were run by his group.” All the union councils of Town-1 are equal to me”, he claimed.

Every union council, he said, situated within Town-1 would be allocated Rs1,100,000 under the Khushal Pakistan Programme, under which the water supply schemes and roads would get priority.  

He said the town had yet not received Rs22.7 million operational grant pledged by the government, which badly affected development schemes in the union councils.” We all have asked the government to transfer rights of property tax collection to towns”,  he added.

Mr Bilour said a girls college for 1,200 students would be established in the old building of Peshawar Municipal Corporation. Earlier, the government had announced that it would auction it, but, later, NWFP governor agreed on setting up of the college in it, he added.

He said citizens needed a modern burns ward in any of the hospitals.” But we have decided to establish a burns hospital in the premises of Roadways House”, he added.

A plan was also chalked out to renovate all the parks in Peshawar, as there already remained a few parks, and that too in bad condition, he said.

As a result of leakages in old water pipelines, certain areas were receiving contaminated water, the Nazim said adding that Rs2.9 million with additional Rs600,000 would be spent on these lines.

Encroachments on roadsides and footpaths, he said, had become a very big problem in the city, even students had complained of this growing mafia.” We want to remove all encroachments from the Ashraf Road to Khyber Bazar with the help of shopkeepers”, he added.