Call for new provinces to tackle governance issues

Speakers at a moot urged the need for adopting an organic solution to the prevailing administrative and governance problems in the country, calling for creating new provinces.

Creating new provinces is a sine qua non for public good and national security.

Some of the logical options on the table were either to convert administrative units into new provinces or merge several districts into new provinces.

The roundtable discussion was held at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) on the need for new provinces to improve governance and public service delivery on Wednesday. A very impressive cast of politicians, public policy practitioners, academics, and media attended the roundtable.

It was opined that the province of Punjab is larger than 196 countries. That prompts either redrawing of boundaries or redistribution of resources, if present-day discord has to be addressed with the growing needs and necessities of a swelling population.

It was also noted that the regional political elite is one of the biggest obstacles on its way, as they see the creation of new provinces as detrimental to their interests. Likewise, the regional parties do not see the same prism as the mainstream political parties, pushing the issue in limbo.

It was stated that a viable way is to let the parliament lead from the front through the formation of a commission or more viable will be the formation of a parliamentary committee to create new provinces after threadbare consultations by taking board all the stakeholders from media to intelligentsia.

The participants elucidated that the delivery of public goods like law and order, civic amenities, and infrastructure development would improve significantly if the existing administrative divisions were converted into new provinces.

According to Daniyal Aziz, a very important governance element was the empowerment of people at the local government level, which would be facilitated by the devolution of powers to local governments. The downside could be the country's departure from federalism and transition towards the unitary polity, entailing national consensus and constitutional amendments, he added.