Pakistan

Devolution complete, provinces ‘empowered’

Raza Rabbani says all federal govt employees to keep their jobs.

Express July 01, 2011

KARACHI:

The devolution of federal ministries to provinces has been completed, Senator Raza Rabbani, head of the implementation committee for the 18th Amendment said on Thursday, a year after the amendment was passed.

“We have done our job and now the provinces have to protect the devolution and their autonomy,” said Rabbani.

“They need to further this process, enhance their capacity, improve governance and make themselves more effective,” he added.

The grievances of the provincial governments with regard to autonomous institutions and projects will be resolved by the Council of Common Interests (CCI), he said.

The senator cautioned, however, that the 18th Amendment promulgated unanimously by the parliament is not ideal and the incumbent and future governments should take initiatives to perfect it.

Rabbani said that since independence, no such dramatic changes have been brought in the constitution and that the 18th Amendment has changed its structure.

“We can now compare our federal government system with that in other countries in the region,” he said, adding that for the first time in history a strong central government has delegated its powers to the grass-roots.

Rabbani cited the example of the dissolution of then West Pakistan, initially formed under the One Unit scheme, that restored provincial autonomy for the first time on July 1970.

The same thing has happened today whereby the powers of the federal government have been confined, he said. He appealed to the provinces to enhance their capacity to run their affairs smoothly and said all the problems they face can be resolved in light of the 18th Amendment.

The Senator said that all federal government employees will keep their jobs in their respective provinces with the exception of some employees posted in Islamabad.

“We will keep these employees in the surplus pool from where they will be adjusted into other departments,” he said. Rabbani also appreciated the role of the people from Balochistan, especially parliamentarians, who, he said, cooperated in the passing of the amendment.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 1^st, 2011.

COMMENTS (12)

Sidra Awan | 13 years ago | Reply These days all we get to hear is bad news when it comes to Pakistan. But in the event there is some good news, our media tries to downplay it for various reasons. One such good news was the devolution of power to the provinces on July 1, 2011. Only a few minutes were dedicated to this historic news on our electronic media. The print media, with some honourable exceptions, also chose to dedicate just a few columns of news space to this issue. I wonder if this kind of attitude has to do with the fact that the 18th Amendment was passed by the PPP-led coalition government and the incumbent parliament. Our media loves to question what the current lot of politicians has done for Pakistan. Well, when they do something good, you ignore it! The next time someone from the media poses this question to our politicians, they should gift the journalist the text of the 18th Amendment.

feddy | 13 years ago | Reply @Engr Nasir Jamal: there was a demand for separate trade and currency.

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Ali | 13 years ago | Reply @Light: You clearly dont understand economics.Provincial autonomy is all about empowering local people to find solution to local problems.How does someone is Islamabad now how many schools or what the job situation is like in a small town in rural pakistan ?. Future governments should go further and strengthen municipalities, give them the power to charge property tax and give Provinces the power to collect Sales Tax

Shabbir Baloch | 13 years ago | Reply especialy balochi sardars come forward now and work for the poor people, sardari nazam and treating poor people as slaves is just not right nowdays, time has changed, work for balochistan and Pakistan

Engr Nasir Jamal | 13 years ago | Reply Everybody seems to be talking about provincial autonomy these days. More power for the provinces to save the federation from falling apart. But when the same demand was voiced from the East Pakistan in the form of six points the Bengalis were termed as traitors and secessionists. Had this autonomy been given to the provinces soon after independence there would not have been developed such an acute sense of frustration in the minds of Bengali people.

malik | 13 years ago | Reply Mr Raza Rabbani may be claiming success but the all the "work" of so-called "devolution" has been done without any preparation and what they created is a mess.

Light | 13 years ago | Reply And how exactly it benefited an ordinary people? Is everyone has access to food now? has everyone got job, home now? Is inflation and security controlled now? This is nothing but politics and it benefits politicians only but we illiterate pakis praising this like something big has achieved

QK | 13 years ago | Reply Thanks Senator Raza Rabbani for developing national consensus on correcting the Constitution in this divided country. You are a real hero.

AB | 13 years ago | Reply Seems like a positive move because operationally it is much more convenient to manage institutions on a provincial scale instead of federal. But God-forbid, if this is to empower persons then we're headed the down-way!

Che | 13 years ago | Reply indeed a great job....now the the chief ministers of the respective provinces will be left with no excuses to blame all the ills on the federal government....

Mirza | 13 years ago | Reply “We have done our job and now the provinces have to protect the devolution and their autonomy,” said Rabbani. “They need to further this process, enhance their capacity, improve governance and make themselves more effective,” Even the worst democracy is better than the best dictatorship. Thanks for empowering the provinces and increasing their autonomy. It would go a long way in satisfying the demands of all the provinces and make the govt locally accountable. Instead of shifting the blame of their failure to the federal govt the provinces would have to take the responsibility of their actions. I only wish that we would have given the autonomy before 1970 and avoided the shameful consequences of controlling everything from Islamabad.

Zain Nabi | 13 years ago | Reply Provinces are unable to efficaciously perform the tasks in hand. I wonder how the management is going to tackle the burden of these additional responsibilities.

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