K-P passes bill to set up charity watchdog

Opposition members demand fresh probe into BRT and BTT projects

PESHAWAR: The provincial assembly on Thursday approved a law to set up the first regulatory body for overseeing various charities operating in the province. However, demands from opposition members for closer scrutiny from the apex Islamic body were rejected.

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Assembly convened on Thursday afternoon with Speaker Mushtaq Ghani presiding over the proceedings.

The assembly unanimously approved the “K-P Charities Bill 2019” presented by Law Minister Sultan Muhammad Khan.

According to the law, the provincial government will form a commission consisting of three to five members. The members will be required to have experience in law, administration, social work or any other relevant field. The members will be selected from amongst current or retired civil servants, judges or public sector officials. Each member will be appointed for a tenure of two years while the chairman cannot serve for two consecutive tenures. Its chief executive officer (CEO) will be appointed by the government.

The commission will be responsible for monitoring expenditures of charities. If required, the commission could inspect their resource utilization through an annual audit.

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Further, the commission will have the authority to seek assistance from any financial or law enforcement agency to investigate any financial irregularities it finds. Moreover, the commission will be empowered to abolish services of any trustee for malpractices while it will also be able to conduct probes into misuse of funds on its own.

The commission will be able to dismiss or suspend the registration of any charitable institution if it fails to satisfy complaints. An appeals committee will be formed to hear complaints against the commission’s decisions.

Most importantly, the bill deems that unregistered charities will be barred from collecting funds while registration documents of charities will be considered as public documents.

Any individual who is found guilty of forging documents or wasting funds could face a prison term between 15 days and six months apart from facing a fine between Rs25,000 to Rs100,000.

The bill was approved after an amendment was suggested from Awami National Party’s (ANP) member Salahuddin Mohmand. Another ANP member, though, considered the bill to be against Islamic values and demanded that it should be sent to the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) for vetting. This demand received support from Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) leader Akram Khan Durrani.

However, the law minister noted per the rules, an approval from at least 50 members was required to refer the bill to the CII. A vote in the house, though, failed to yield the required amount of votes and the opposition’s demand was defeated.

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The house also passed the K-P Education Monitoring Authority Bill 2019.

The law minister also introduced the K-P Judicial Academy (Amendment) Bill 2019, and the K-P Civil Servants (Amendment) Bill 2019 — which proposes to raise the retirement age for government employees from 60 years to 63 years — in the house. MMA member introduced the private member bill Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill 2019.

K-P Assembly approved various resolutions on Thursday.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) member Momina Basit tabled a supplementary resolution about the vehicles impounded by the police. She contended that these vehicles have rusted due to improper storage under the open sky within the remits of various police stations. She demanded that a warehouse should be built where these vehicles can be protected from the elements.

The house adopted eight other resolutions, including condolence over the death of 35 people in Orakzai and police officers in Karachi, demanding medical centres in Malakand Division, constructing the Shaheed Farman Ali Khan Medical Centre in Swat, increasing legal staff at the Pakistani consulate in Saudi Arabia and widening a road in Peshawar. Supplementary resolutions included improving the food and nutrition policy, ensuring decent behaviour of airport staff with overseas Pakistanis and making laws to protect animals.

During the proceedings, the opposition parties presented a notice to deliberate irregularities in the Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) project, noting that the government had allegedly fudged figures of the project to hide their alleged corruption.

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) lawmaker Nighat Orakzai claimed that government departments were providing incorrect answers to questions asked about the BRT. She added it was a similar case with the Billion Tree Tsunami (BTT) project.

Durrani demanded to form an inquiry committee into the BRT issue.

However, Sultan opposed it, contending that committee to probe the BTT had already been formed on the call of the opposition but it was politically motivated.

The issue of the K-P Speaker House in Nathiagali and the K-P House in Islamabad were raised by MMA’s Mehmood Khan on a point of objection. He said that according to the rules, the assembly was an autonomous institution and that any interference in its affairs was illegal. In this regard, he argued that the government was giving the Speaker House in Nathyagali to a private entity without seeking approval from the assembly.

Orakzai demanded that Chief Minister and Governor houses should be opened up for hire. In a rare occurrence, the law minister agreed with the opposition on this point.

At this, Speaker Ghani said that they were trying to eliminate profligacy and to generate resources from government guesthouses was part of the government’s policy. In this regard, he said that soon, even government officials and lawmakers will have to pay to stay at public rest houses.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2019.