MULTAN, Oct 2: The Punjab home department has forbidden the chairmen and members of the district public safety commissions to do direct correspondence with departments of federal and provincial governments and the National Reconstruction Bureau.

According to an official handout released here on Saturday, in a letter addressed to all the district Nazims, DCOs and DPOs in the province, the home department has ordered that only the secretaries of the DPSCs are competent to do correspondence on behalf of their respective safety commissions.

The chairman and members of the DPSC will have to route their correspondence through the secretary appointed by the provincial government from among the civil servants posted in the district.

The DPSC chairman can do correspondence with the provincial government only if he has to lodge a complaint against the commission secretary, the handout adds.

Civil society organizations have strongly condemned the home department's move to what, they say, kill an organ of the local government system envisaged under the devolution plan.

Sarwar Bari, the chief coordinator of the Pattan development organization, an NGO actively engaged in strengthening the local government system in the country, said the bureaucracy had been after the DPSCs since the inception of devolution plan and it had successfully nailed the institution created by the NRB to check police atrocities against the people.

He said the provincial home department's latest direction was also part of that campaign. He opined that making the DPSCs spineless at this stage when the next LB elections were on the cards could be the part of official efforts to get desired results, as DPSCs had representation of a cross section of society including the opposition parties.