LAHORE, April 30: Lack of interest and awareness among people in the Punjab are stated to be major hurdles in the creation of the Citizens Community Boards supposed to utilize 25 per cent development budget of the local governments.

Some government officials, interviewed by Dawn on Wednesday, expressed doubts about the immediate creation of the boards, which were required to function at all levels of the local governments.

Previously, lack of rules governing the boards was claimed to be the main hurdle in their creation. But these rules were notified by the provincial government about 10 days ago on the guidelines provided by the National Reconstruction Bureau, which introduced the local government system in the country.

There are 3,453 union councils, 122 tehsils and 34 district governments in the Punjab.

According to the local government law, the boards are required to match 20 per cent of funds for development in their respective areas. The remaining 80 per cent funds are to be provided by the local government department.

Each of these boards are required to have 25 people, all non-elected, as their members. They are required to function only after registration with the EDO community development.

The officials said each local government was required to reserve 20 per cent of its development budget for the community boards. They said such budget would continue to be deposited with the separate accounts for the community boards till their formulation. However, they admitted that the development would be neglected in the meantime.

“It’s not the matter of protecting the funds for the boards. It is the development which will be neglected,” they said.

The officials said carrying out development activities mainly with the governments’ funds through community boards was a new concept for the people.

Initially, the people were skeptical of the local governments’ functioning. “The system has generated political and personal rivalries and a wish to dominate one another at local level. Then, common people, especially those living in rural areas, find it hard to take part in development activities without the assistance of the influential,” they said.

On the other hand, the NRB sounds hopeful of the creation of the boards not only in Punjab, but elsewhere in the country.

According to the recently released figures, as many as 2,136 community boards had applied for registration in 100 districts and 1,508 were registered for work at the union level despite the absence of registration procedure. Of these, around 1,066 were registered for union and tehsil level work in the water, sanitation, education and health sectors in the Punjab. These were 224 in the NWFP, 213 in Sindh and five in Balochistan.

The NRB officials said the boards were required for the broader participation of people in the development activities in their respective areas. The non-elected voluntary organizations were an institutional mechanism of seeking the people’s participation, they added.

The NRB claimed that all the previous community development programmes failed in the country because of their top-down and bureaucratic approach. However, they hoped that the community boards’ plan would be successful because of its bottom-up approach, transparency, enhanced accountability, financing, pro-active citizen participation in decision-making and the boards’ sense of ownership.