HYDERABAD, Aug 27: The District Council, Hyderabad, on Tuesday has lashed out at the bureaucracy for sabotaging the devolution system in order to protect its vested interests so that people could not be empowered at the grass roots level as promised by President Pervez Musharraf.

The members stressed the need to work out a joint strategy in order to enforce the writ of the district council.

The five-day session of the council began today with Aijaz Shah presiding over it and the members complaining non-provision of copies of the minutes of the previous meeting.

The chair informed the members that since the minutes were spread over 60 pages it was next to impossible, financially, to provide copies to each and every member.

The session deferred the resolutions of councillors Rana Mehmood Ali Khan and Sumera Akhlaque regarding the law and order situation and performance of the traffic police as they were to be discussed in the presence of the AIG, Police, Hyderabad Region, and the DPO.

The chair had, however, referred to another resolution of Rana Mehmood Ali Khan pertaining to the response of different district government departments on the resolutions so far adopted by the district council since last year.

The debate was going on when the session was adjourned for a day by the chair.

In his resolution, Mr Khan stated that the session adopted countless number of resolutions during the last one year but none of them had been implemented so far.

Severely criticizing the government for its utter failure in fulfilling its promises of provision of funds, powers and resources to the council, he maintained that the council had to pass two budgets, prepared by the Sindh Government, and the members continued to wait for the transfer of powers right at the grassroots level.

He pointed out that the Taluka Council Nazimeen had introduced their own system in which the Union Council Nazimeen had no say.

He said that there had been no response to the queries sent by members to the various departments during the council’s session.

He said, “While we lost everything in this system, we achieved nothing and the bureaucracy succeeded in sabotaging the system.”

Throwing light on each and every aspect on the way of the working of the bureaucracy, Dr Ayaz Arain said that the members had fallen prey to expediencies with the result that they failed to establish their identity as elected representatives.

He contended that basically the session’s aim was to discuss the policies of 12 government departments, given under the district government’s control.

He said, “Even the district Nazim’s directives are not being implemented and he had also failed to fulfil his promises.”

Mr Arain also held members equally responsible for the dismal performance of the council on the ground that they tabled those resolutions which did not fall in their domain and continued to discuss useless things.

He demanded the district Nazim and the DCO, Hyderabad, to apprise the members about the accounts of the district government.

Hussain Bux Hussain referred to his meeting with the Union Council Nazim of Peshawar who informed the former that they were given Rs4 million in the NWFP for development activities.