Bill indefinitely postpones LG polls

Sindh Assembly passes the Local Government Bill, postponing local govt elections for an indefinite period.

KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly passed the Local Government (Fifth Amendment) Bill, 2010 on Tuesday, postponing the local government elections in the province for an indefinite period.

The bill was moved by provincial law minister Ayaz Soomro. “Keeping in view the unprecedented floods in the county particularly the way they have affected Sindh, it is impossible to hold the local bodies elections in accordance with the timeframe provided in Section 170-A of the Sindh Local Government Ordinance 2001,” it was stated in the bill.

The Sindh governor had promulgated an ordinance in August to postpone the election.

The MPAs of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement were not present in the assembly when the bill was passed as according to party sources, they were attending a rally organised to protest the sentence given to Dr Aafia Siddiqui by a US court.

Meanwhile, the Awami National Party had already boycotted the session to protest the postponement of the PS-94 by-election.

The opposition benches opposed the move to postpone of the local bodies elections for an indefinite time, claiming that the government is not willing to hold the polls. However, the treasury members responded that the elections would be held once the floodwater recedes and people go back to their homes.

Soomro said that around 15 districts of the province are still inundated and people are living in camps.

“How can we hold the elections when there is eight to ten feet of water in the houses of people and all their valuables including identity cards have been washed away?”

Leader of the opposition in the assembly, Jam Madad Ali, said there is nothing wrong in postponing the elections in the current situation, but the government should have given a timeframe for when they would be held.

Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid’s Shaharyar Maher said that the bureaucracy has played a discriminatory role following the floods and the local bodies could have played a better role in the provision of relief to the survivors.

However, the government ministers reiterated their stance that the lack of local governments did not make a difference.

“People are saying that the nazims could have done a better job to help the flood survivors, but they (nazims) have done nothing but misappropriate government funds,” provincial local government minister Agha Siraj Durrani told the house. Maher said that it is unfair to call nazims corrupt as the present government has broken all records of corruption.

Judicial committee formed to inquire into breaches

The Sindh government constituted a judicial committee on Tuesday to probe into the breaches that developed in the Tori Bund near Guddu and the SM Bund in Thatta. The committee will prepare a report under the supervision of two retired judges of the Sindh High Court, Justice (retd) Azizullah Memon and Justice (retd) Roshan Ali Esani, and submit its findings within three weeks

Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah said that the opposition had been taken into confidence when the judges were nominated. Though the breaches were natural, the committee had been constituted to conduct an impartial investigation into the matter on the demand of the opposition and some other quarters, he added.

“We have eyewitnesses who will record their statements before the committee,” he said, adding that the government planned to reveal video footages of the bunds before and after the breaches took place.

Fending off accusations

“Some people claimed that we [made breaches] to save the land belonging to our Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leaders, which is an illogical attitude. We cannot sink all of Sindh at the cost of saving one village or field belonging to any PPP minister. The civil and military officials who have seen both the breaches all said that they were natural,” he said.

Shah said that while the government had made all possible efforts to handle the devastation following one of the biggest catastrophes across the province, it was impossible to protect all areas alongside the 1,325-kilometre-long stretch of embankments, starting from Kashmore and going all the way to Keti Bunder.

“We were informed about the floods 13 days before it reached Guddu. How could we have strengthened all the embankments within the given time?” he questioned.

The predictions made by irrigation officials and water experts were also off, said the chief minister, who claimed that Wapda officials and water experts had predicted that Sindh will face floods bringing around 900,000 cusecs of water, while what was seen was 1,180,000 cusecs.

Furthermore, members of the opposition are complaining that they were not taken into confidence and that their names have been excluded from the relief committees, said Shah, who claimed that this was untrue.

“I want to clarify that a high level meeting was held before the floods arrived, in which we had asked each elected representative to monitor a 25-kilometre-long stretch embankment of the River Indus. But many members of the opposition did not [feel the need to participate],” he said.

While the CM accepted that the government was at fault for a lacking of proper planning, it cannot be accused of deliberately creating a “flood-like” situation.

He said that all of the government’s resources were employed to save the Sukkur Barrage, as it plays a vital role in the country’s agriculture-driven economy.

“If it had been washed away, we would not have been able to build this kind of a barrage again,” he said.

While appreciating the role of the armed forces and law enforcement agencies, Shah said that they had worked hard in shifting people to safer places.

“Compared to other provinces, Sindh has suffered the least in terms of a loss of lives,” he said.

The role of landlords

Referring to the protective bunds made by certain “influential” landlords who were irrigating their fields by encroaching upon the River Indus, Shah said that “these illegal bunds are one of the main reasons behind the breaches in the embankments”. When the landlords held water back to irrigate their field, the water pressure led to breaches in the embankments, he added.

Relief work

Even though it was difficult to accommodate seven million people in camps, give them food and medical facilities, people are now happy, said Shah. “Apart from the Watan Card scheme, we are also providing tents to those people who are returning to their villages while we have allocated land to those people who want to stay in Karachi.”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 29^th, 2010.