Devolution delayed: Reps await first assembly meeting

PTI representatives threaten court action over delay.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) announced on Tuesday that it would seek court intervention to operationalise the capital’s local bodies if the government continued to delay the devolution of powers to elected representatives.

“The government is deliberately delaying devolution. PTI will wait until May 31, after which we will be left with no option but to move the court,” said Ali Awan, PTI’s nominee for leader of the opposition in the proposed Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation (IMC).

The elected representatives have been worried by the inordinate delay in making the local bodies system operational.

In a letter, 15 elected PTI union councils’ chairmen urged the mayor to convene the first meeting of the district assembly, saying that they wished to perform their duties as per the law and according to the expectations of their voters.

“They [elected members] are unaware of the legal and procedural requirements to take up their roles according to the law, therefore it is humbly requested that the honourable mayor calls a meeting of the general assembly of the Islamabad Local government under the ICT Local Government Act,” reads the letter.

They cited Section 67 of the act, which reads, “A local government shall, within three months of the assumption of office, frame bylaws for the conduct of its meetings.”

Despite the lapse of the said time period, the local government has yet to take up its duties due to bureaucratic hurdles in devolution of powers, distribution of assets, and transfer of functions to the elected representatives.

“Our voters do not know about legal and bureaucratic hurdles and other formalities. They have been demanding that we deliver,” Awan said.

He said that as a last resort, the party had now decided to move the court.

The local government act was signed into law nine months ago by the President Mamnoon Hussain, and clearly gives 180 days (six months) to complete the transfer of functions, assets, and liabilities to the local government.

Local bodies’ elections in Islamabad were held in November 2015, while notifications of returned candidates were issued in December 2015.

First meeting in ongoing month, says mayor

Talking to The Express Tribune, Sheikh Ansar Aziz, the mayor of Islamabad, said that he would convene the first meeting of the IMC “most probably in the coming week or at least in the ongoing month”.

Aziz, who was also perturbed by the delay, met Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to request that he direct officials to expedite the process.

He said that he had been assured that the issues would be sorted out soon, but “apparently there seems to have been no steps forward”.

He said that as mayor he could convene the first meeting of the local bodies any time as the winning candidates have been notified.

However, Aziz denied any link between the delay in convening the meeting and the completion of pending processes such as assets and liabilities distribution, and transfer of functions and responsibilities.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 11^th, 2016.