Govt to withdraw LG powers from commissioners, DCs
KARACHI, April 21: A meeting of the core committee of the Pakistan People’s Party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement and PML-Functional decided on Saturday to withdraw a notification through which the provincial government had given powers to all commissioners and deputy commissioners to monitor the activities of administrators of local governments of their respective areas.
The provincial government had in March this year issued a notification arming the commissioner and deputy commissioners with a monitoring role over and above the local government administrators.
Officials said that the core committee had met under the directives of Chief Minister Sindh Syed Qaim Ali Shah and discussed the role of the commissioners, deputy commissioners and local government officers in the light of present circumstances.
After a thorough discussion, they said, it approved some recommendations to be submitted to the CM for consideration and necessary action.
Sources said that all the coalition parties were of the view that there should be no role of commissioners and deputy commissioners over andabove administrators.
The core committee members also deliberated on the issue of holding local government elections on the directives of the Supreme Court.
The Sindh government would submit a reply before the apex court and in this regard a meeting would be held on Tuesday to discuss the issue.
According to one senior member of the ruling coalition, the government was in the process of framing new laws and until that was done elections for the local government could not be held.
He also said that elections were not possible without census on which the delimitation of constituencies depended. The meeting was attended among others by Senior Sindh Minister Pir Mazharul Haq, LG Minister Agha Siraj Durrani, Finance Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, Law Minister Ayaz Soomro, Archives Minister Engineer Rafique, provincial minister Syed Sardar Ahmed, IT Minister Raza Haroon, Health Minister Dr Sagheer Ahmed and Chief Minister’s Adviser Imtiaz Ahmed Shaikh.