Devolution plan: Provinces’ request for extension rejected

Claim they cannot afford employees of ministries which are to be transferred.

ISLAMABAD:

A parliamentary commission overseeing the implementation of the 18th Amendment has turned down the provinces’ request to defer the devolution of federal ministries to the end of the year, announcing that the process would be completed by the original deadline of June 30, 2011.

“We would have to amend the constitution to extend the deadline … and that is not the easiest thing to do,” Senator Raza Rabbani, the chairman of the commission, told reporters after a meeting with the chief secretaries of the four provinces on Tuesday.

Officials who attended the meeting told The Express Tribune that the top provincial bureaucrats sought a six-month extension for the transfer, citing financial constraints and unpreparedness.

Officials said the major bone of contention between the commission and the provinces was whether the employees of the ministries to be devolved would be retained by the centre or be taken in by the provinces.

The provinces were willing to accept the employees only if the central government continued to pay their salaries for another five years, a demand that the officials said was unlikely to be met.

The commission announced last week that five federal ministries — Education, Tourism, Social Welfare and Special Education, Livestock and Dairy Development, and Culture —  would be transferred to the provinces on March 15.

The dispute over who would pay the salaries of the employees of these ministries was the reason the transfer was now delayed to March 22, officials said.

Rabbani played down the differences, telling reporters he was confident that the process would be completed on time. “We will overcome all hurdles to get to the finish line in time. We will complete the process by June 30, 2011,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 16^th 2011.