Senate panel opposes repeal of 18th Amendment

Seeks details from provinces on status of transfer of departments

ISLAMABAD: A Senate panel expressed serious concern over reports suggesting efforts to repeal the 18^th Amendment, consequently all the painstaking work on devolution.

The newly-formed Senate’s functional panel on devolution sought details from provinces about the status of transfer of departments since the adoption of the 18th Amendment.

Apparently, the senate panel resumed work where the previous one had left off.

A meeting of the functional committee was held under Senator Maula Bux Chandio to discuss all relevant issues.



Expressing concern over certain developments that occurred during the tenure of the previous PML-N government, Chandio warned that efforts were being made to revert the devolved subjects back to the Centre.

According to him, poor performance of provinces was being used to justify the rollback.

Senator Raza Rabbani, who played a major role in the passage of the 18^th Amendment, said that the previous committee’s report and its performance also needed to be reviewed.

“The committee’s chairperson must be summoned to brief this panel about the previous committee’s performance and updates,” said Rabbani.

Chandio pointed out that employees of devolved departments had been facing a complex situation.

He reminded that departments such as Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) should have been transferred to provinces but nothing had yet been done in this regard.

“Why is this so?” he asked.

Senator Sadia Abbasi pointed out that similar problems had been encountered when ministries of petroleum, education and health had been devolved.

Subsequently, Chandio ordered the secretary of the committee to send letters, asking all provinces to detail their problems and which departments still had not been transferred.

“Provinces need to update the committee about the current status of implementation of devolution and challenges they were facing,” he said.

He said that if provinces could smoothly run their affairs, running departments should not be a problem for them.

Almost eight years after the adoption of the 18th Amendment, the cabinet division recently sent a letter to federal ministries, asking them if they wanted functions of the devolved institutions back.

Background

As many as 17 ministries had been devolved to provinces after the passage of the 18^th Amendment, but some key ministries were reestablished since 2011.

These included ministries of health, education, climate change, human rights, population and welfare, food and agriculture and a few others. During the implementation phase, several of the devolved subjects were hastily transferred to non-relevant ministries, especially in case of health and education, affecting many crucial projects.



In 2012, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had formed a cabinet committee on restructuring, but it held just three meetings. The committee held its last meeting in 2015 that was chaired by the then finance minister Ishaq Dar.

Since then, it seemed that the government had relegated the matter of implementing devolution to cold storage.

The federal government appeared to be dragging its feet over several major issues.

It was only in April this year that the PM issued a notification for regularizing more than 38,000 employees in provinces who had been facing uncertainty since 2010.