In office, without office: Chairmen without chairs

Newly-elected LG representatives find they have no powers, finances or even places to sit

KARACHI:

With the fervour of winning the local government elections having died down a little, the recently-elected candidates must now come to terms with the harsh reality that they do not have much power to perform their jobs. What is even more disappointing is the fact that many of the chairmen, vice-chairmen and general councilors do not even have office spaces to operate from.

In the past, each union committee and council had its own office, where people could approach their elected representatives. The primary function of these offices was to issue death, birth and marriage certificates, as well as resolve local-level civic issues.

Planning failure?

This time, however, the government created more union committees and councils but failed to devise a plan for the provision of infrastructure and other facilities to them. Speaking to The Express Tribune, many UC chairmen admitted they were quite confused with the whole setup as they did not even have an office space. "Earlier, there were only 15 union councils in the Karachi district council, which comprises the rural areas of Malir and West districts," explained Shahid Jokhio, the chairman of UC Khurkhro, which falls within the limits of the Karachi district council. "After the delimitation process, the number of UCs has increased to 38. I don't know where our office will be located now," he said, adding that all the recently-elected representatives of the 23 new UCs have found themselves in a similar conundrum.



Officials in the local government department said that the provincial government has made no provision in the budget for the newly-bifurcated UCs. AD Soomro, who has been elected chairman from Bhittaiabad, said they have approached the higher authorities, seeking permission to use a portion of a school in the area. "My constituency has been carved out from Shah Faisal UC. We are also considering taking over one of the wards of the previous UCs for an ad hoc arrangement. I hope the issue will be resolved soon," Soomro said.

Less for more

There were 178 UCs falling within the jurisdiction of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) in the last local government setup when Mustafa Kamal was the city nazim. This number has now climbed to 209. At least 31 of the newly-elected representatives have no place to sit.

Meanwhile, a number of properties belonging to municipal committees, town committees and union councils have been occupied by the land mafia, where they have built high-rise buildings. "The town committee owned 20 shops, two community halls and a plot spread over 2,000 square yards. But the land mafia have occupied these places," lamented a newly-elected councilor of Shikarpur district. According to the election commission's records, there are 1,478 UCs in 29 districts of Sindh. Reports have started pouring in that many high-rise buildings, restaurants and petrol pumps have been built on the properties of these municipal committees, town committee and UCs.

No money for infrastructure

Speaking to The Express Tribune, the provincial minister for local government, Jam Khan Shoro, said that they would try to accommodate the elected representatives in alternative places. "As such, we have no provision in the budget because we were uncertain whether the elections would even be held or not," he said, adding that he has recently met officials of his department and issued directives to develop a database of all assets that fall under the domain of the local bodies in the province. "We will locate all the properties using GPS in order to ascertain their current status. After that, we will take action to retrieve their illegal possession from the land mafia," he said.



When his attention was diverted to the lack of powers granted to the elected representatives, he said, “They have been given enough powers and the assembly can draft legislation in the future too.”

He added that all the provinces have the same law and the role of the provincial government will be confined to a supervisor only. "Since there was no watchdog during the tenure of the previous LG government, the local representatives not only sold billions of rupees worth of government properties but also misappropriated a lot of funds by carrying out substandard work on flyovers, bridges and roads," he claimed.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 14^th,  2015.