LAHORE: Almost all public sector companies have been cleaned of political appointments by the previous Shahbaz government but it is not easy to do so with the controversial cattle market management companies as it requires first amending the Local Government Act of 2013.

This has been conveyed to the caretaker chief minister by the local government department, seeking his permission to have the law amended, official sources say.

The Punjab government had on June 25 asked departments to cancel the notification of political members in boards of directors of public companies so that they could not use their influence in favour of any candidate or political party in the forthcoming elections. The effort was also made to assist the Election Commission of Pakistan hold free, fair and impartial elections.

Officials said on Thursday that like other departments, the local government removed such political members of its seven waste management companies in Lahore, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Multan and Bahawalpur, and two parking companies in Lahore and Faisalabad through executive orders because the appointments were made the same way.

But, the divisional level nine cattle companies made by the Shahbaz Sharif government were still managing cattle markets in their areas of jurisdiction.

All the chairmen and mayors of the local governments, minus the chairmen of the union councils or authorities, are still members of cattle companies because they were appointed after under Section 146-A of the Punjab Local Government Act, 2013 introduced for the very purpose.

Officials said the caretaker chief minister had been informed that these political members of the cattle committees could not be de-notified, or the board of directors re-constituted without amending the Punjab Local Government Act, 2013.

They said the chief minister had been requested to order the law department to help make the required amendment to the law. The divisional commissioners should also be ordered to recommend new apolitical members of the cattle market committees while strictly adhering to the selection criteria as provided in Public Sector Companies (Corporate Governance) Rules, 2013.

Officials said the companies had deprived the local government department of billions of rupees which it was earning by annually auctioning the cattle markets in the province. The last auction in 2013-14 had earned Rs 2.858 billion to the department.

The contract system was abolished under the pretext of abolishing the cattle market tax which the contract winning groups would charge from the sellers and the buyers. The tax could be higher but to ensure it, the contractors would spend money to attract sellers from across the province and to provide facilities for them.

Under the new system, the tax was abolished but objections about the functioning of the private companies started mushrooming, the officials alleged.

Published in Dawn, July 06th, 2018