0
LAHORE The Punjab Local Government Department is learnt to have made draft law of the new local government system it wants to introduce, and sent it to the chief minister for his opinion and approval.
'The law, entitled the Local Government Act, 2009, is being finalised to make preparations for the inter-provincial meeting scheduled to be held in Islamabad on June 12 to finally discuss future of the existing system,' sources informed Dawn here on Wednesday.
They said the meeting in Islamabad had been convened by the federal local government minister who had asked all his provincial counterparts to give final recommendations on it.
Sources said the proposed draft law was based on the Local Government Ordinance of 1979, but it also retained some good aspects of the ordinance promulgated in 2001. These were otherwise being condemned by the Punjab PML-N government, they added.
It contained some important clauses to address ill-planned urbanisation and migration from rural to urban areas that led to huge solid waste management, sewerage and water supply problems.
It was aimed at withdrawing the rural-urban divide introduced by the LGO of 2001, and reintroducing the defunct executive magistracy for effective administrative control.
Sources claimed that the NWFP and Balochistan governments also had prepared almost identical draft laws. But Sindh wanted to retain the existing district government system at least for its urban centres like Karachi and Hyderabad.
They said during the inter-provincial meeting held in Islamabad last week, there was a proposal to extend the tenure of the existing local governments for another year. But Punjab opposed it and maintained that it did not want even a day's extension to the local governments whose tenure was expiring on Oct 17.
The issues of fresh elections and the expiry of the constitutional protection to the existing system on Dec 31, 2009, too were raised. But Punjab maintained that it would repeal the local government ordinance immediately after the expiry of the protection even if the federal election commissioner opts to hold the fresh elections after October.
