No Funds, No Work

The LG councillors have yet to receive any funds from the Rs 37b allocated to them by the PFC in KP

Soon after taking over their offices after the two-legged local bodies election in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the elected local government councillors have been voicing their concerns against the non-provision of funds and more recently, against the repeated attempts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to minimize the role and authority of the local bodies in the grassroots developmental activities across the province.

According to Himayatullah Mayar, Mayor of the Mardan district the local bodies’ councillors were yet to receive a single rupee from the 37 billion rupees allocated to the local government by the Provincial Finance Commission (PFC). “Remaining half of the fiscal year 2021-2022 and three months of the fiscal year 2022-2023 have passed since the first phase of the local government elections in December 2021 yet not a single local government representative has received any funds for carrying out any municipal services or developmental work,” a dismayed Mayar claimed.

He raised his concerns about the KP City Improvement Project with over 70 billion rupees funding by the Asian Development Bank to rehabilitate and provide municipal services like sanitation and sewerage, and water supply in seven divisional headquarters of the province. “The KP government has taken this project into its own hands instead of letting the local government do it, which is mandated and more fit to provide such services at the local level. Through this step, the provincial government has effectively made the local government ineffective,” Mayar asserted.

The seasoned political leader of the Awami National Party (ANP) informed that the local bodies’ elections were held under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Amendment Act 2013 and elected representatives across the province took oath and charge of their offices under the same act. “However, the provincial government brought new amendments in Section 53 and brought down the proviso from 30 per cent of the provincial Annual Development Plan (ADP) to less than 20 per cent,” Mayar detailed.

Furthermore, the executive authority of the elected local bodies members was taken away by placing Section 23A and Section 25A of the Local Government Act in the Rules of Business. The land use, housing societies, and building control authorities were also taken away while the provincial government also took away our mandate of municipal services as it can now have the authority to directly fund and intervene in the municipal services,” Himayatullah Mayar added.

Expressing his views about the repeated amendments in the local government act, Mayor of Peshawar Zubair Ali opined that historically local bodies governments were implemented in KP in experimental form.

“Pervez Musharraf initially provided a system of the mayor before replacing it with district nazims in a modified form. Technically, that modified system should have remained and further smoothened to eliminate any flaws. Yet, when the town municipalities, bureaucracy and general public became used to with it, it was replaced after nearly 10 years by the PTI under Pervez Khattak, who brought in a new system in 2014 and termed it as the world’s best local bodies system. However, after just one tenure the former chief minister himself replaced it with a completely new system in 2018,” the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) leader maintained.

The Peshawar mayor added that all developed countries are on the list of developed countries because of strong local government systems, that guarantee the provision of the best facilities to their people.

“Every system is bound to fail when you do not take relevant stakeholders onboard. These stakeholders are aware of the grassroots level issues and needs. Unfortunately, the local bodies in KP have always been used for political victimization of the opposition and PTI did the same. Furthermore, continuous amendments were made in 2019, 2020, 2021 and now 2022 to the KP local government Act 2013. These early amendments show the ill intentions of the ruling party,” Zubair Ali alleged.

Seconding Zubair Ali, Himayat Mayar added that with the new amendments, the provincial government will be able to achieve what it wants even if not even a single elected local government member attends during their entire four-year tenure.

“There will be no effect and the offices will remain functional as appointed officials or government servants, be it Deputy Commissioner, Assistant Commissioners, Secretaries or TMOs; will manage the work. Elected people have been left with no space and even if the local government councils do not pass a budget, the local government commission can pass and authenticate it and they are already able to utilize it through the new amendments,” Mayar lamented.

He claimed that under the new system, the authority was shifted from districts to the tehsil level however not even a single tehsil office was provided for education, agricultural extension, livestock, soil conservations, social welfare, population welfare and sports etc. “Only now the provincial government has issued a notification, giving a one-year extension for the creation of these offices. Under the notification, the deputy commissioner has been made responsible for the salary budget, non-salary budget and development budget,” Mayar alleged.

Furthermore, Himayatullah Mayar argued that the provincial government has been claiming that they want to devolution of power through the amendments. “The devolution must be done according to Article 37i and Article 140A of the Constitution of Pakistan. 137i mentions that the State will decentralize the government responsibilities to facilitate the disposal of administration business and to meet the convivence and requirements of the people,” he said.

“Similarly, Article 140a says that every province will provide a local government system, which will give political, administrative and financial responsibilities to the elected local government members and not the appointed government servants. However, it is the other way round in case of the amendments of the KP government as appointed officials have been given all these responsibilities, which is injustice and a clear violation of the constitution of Pakistan,” Himayat Mayar opined.

Explaining the role of the federal and provincial assembly members, Zubair Ali said that their responsibility was to work on the provision of the legislation while that legislation is implemented by the local government. “If the federal or provincial assembly leaves the legislation work aside and takes responsibility of local government, it will give a negative message to the people of the province and country. In the Musharraf era, there were nearly 32 departments under the local bodies. Pervez Khattak reduced the local bodies’ authority to only 18 departments. Worse yet is now as, under the current system, the local government is responsible for only 12 departments,” Zubair Ali expressed.

“For the first time in the history of Pakistan local bodies representatives were elected on the basis of the public vote. Since the PTI provincial government was not in favour of party-based local bodies elections, they did amendments before the elections and presented those amendments to the Peshawar High Court (PHC) as rules of business. These amendments became part of the judgment of the PHC. However, the KP government opposed the decision and went into appeal at the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which upheld the PHC ruling.,” Peshawar mayor Zubair Ali expressed.

Similarly, Himayat Mayar argued that the reason behind the illogical amendments was the nearing of the next general elections. “This is the last year before the general elections. PTI does not want to share the utilization of the development budget since it has a majority in the assembly and instead of fulfilling their actual responsibility of legislation, the ruling party’s members of the provincial assembly are overseeing the minimal duties of installation of street lights and transformers and constructing sewerage lines in an effort to convince voters of their delivery of services,” Mayar rued.

“Local government takes about 90 per cent of the burden off the shoulders of the provincial government. The local government representatives are able to provide good governance on the lower level, improve the provision of social welfare services, and local development and boost democracy. If the provincial government does not provide the local government with their due authority, they will not only lose the confidence of the elected members but also the common voters in the next elections,” Mayar said.

Likewise, Zubair Ali added that “after a poor show of power in the first phase of the local bodies elections, the PTI provincial government realized that the opposition members will be holding offices for the next four years, the government suddenly changed the amendments of 2021 in the first quarter of the current year. All powers given to the elected representatives of the public were taken away from them and were given to the bureaucracy,” he claimed.

It merits mentioning that not only the local bodies representatives of the opposition parties are deploring the uncertainty around the haphazard decisions of the provincial government. Reportedly, many PTI tehsil chairmen and councillors have raised their concerns about the spending of the development budget through the MPAs and government officials. Interestingly, a source informed this scribe that KP Chief Minister Mahmood Khan’s brother and Matta tehsil chairman Abdullah Khan, who also remained tehsil Nazim in the past recently told his father Dr Muhammad Khan that his son and CM KP had taken away the ‘tent’ that former Chief Minister Pervez Khattak had provided the local government.

However, talking to Bol News, Abdullah Khan said that all PTI office bearers, including him, strongly abided by the party decisions. “Whatever the party sees good for the people of the province, we will respect it. However, we also have a responsibility of providing facilitation to our voters and the freedom of speech in our party gives us the luxury of openly highlighting our concerns about anything we see below par in the local bodies system. We have told the party high-ups about the issues and difficulties we are facing. This is the election year and the party needs local government representatives to assist its work in delivering facilities to the general public,” Abdullah Khan expressed.