Punjab LB funds

It is heartening to note that Punjab CM Usman Buzdar has announced unfreezing of local bodies funds. These funds will help local bodies to solve problems like sewerage and potable water. The need for restoration of the frozen LB funds was being felt after the recent spell of heavy rains in Lahore had wreaked havoc in the metro city due to accumulation of water on main thoroughfares, other roads and in residential areas. The problem was mainly caused due to choked stormwater drains and a complete lack of drainage facilities in many areas of Punjab’s historic city. The terrible devastation was evidently the result of years of neglect by the successive provincial governments. Lahore witnessed this kind of havoc during the rainy season every year in the recent past. This year the situation was so bad that it provided Sindh government ministers with a stick to beat their opponents with; they asked their detractors to also look at the sorry state of affairs in Lahore while blaming the Sindh government for the state of affairs in Karachi, Hyderabad and other parts of the province.

The restoration of LB funds in Punjab is an encouraging development worth emulating by other provinces, especially Sindh where local governments complain that they lack funds to undertake uplift work. This grievance of Sindh’s local governments cannot be dismissed in view of the sad state of affairs prevailing in urban areas of Sindh. It has been more than manifested during the ongoing rain spell and the record-breaking devastations that it has so far caused in urban areas, especially in Karachi and Hyderabad. Most local governments in Sindh claim that after the 18^th Amendment, the federal government transfers funds to the province but they are not passed on to them; this hinders development work at the local level. If this was true, the outgoing Karachi mayor was a classic case of responsibilities without power resulting mainly from lack of funds.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 27^th, 2020.

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