LG devolution, rules of business still in the works

Govt short of security personnel for election duty.

PESHAWAR:

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government is still in the process of preparing to devolve some of its powers to the grass-roots level after local government elections on May 30. After the polls, it is estimated the government will have to spend over Rs2 billion to produce an operational infrastructure for councils, according to data available with The Express Tribune.

New lines of governance

All over K-P, 25 district nazims and 25 naib nazims will be elected and will start working alongside 76 tehsil nazimeen and 76 naib nazimeen. Similarly, at the village and neighbourhood level, a set-up of nazimeen and naib nazimeen will come into existence.

The city district government will be formed with Peshawar’s four towns after local government elections are completed, replacing the Peshawar district council and municipal corporation system.

Where do the councillors go?

The government also has to provide offices and vehicles for the nazims and will have to build district council halls. The government needs Rs2.86 billion for constructing buildings, buying vehicles, paying rent and training staff.

How to govern

According to sources privy to the inner workings of LG, the government has drafted the District Government Rules of Business 2015, but it is yet to be signed by the chief secretary and notified in an official gazette to make it legal.

Officials said during a briefing to the chief minister on Monday, objections over the Local Government Act 2013 were raised and amendments were proposed, but K-P Local Government Secretary Jamil Ahmad refuted the reports saying, “The system is new and the drawbacks will be fixed and removed with time.”

Changing political dynamics

One source, who requested anonymity said, “No doubt, the local government system is a challenge in terms of devolving powers to the grass-root level, but it will provide a trained leadership of more than 40,000 individuals who are taking part in the elections.”

“The village and neighbourhood level elections are being conducted on a non-party basis, but those contesting will have affiliations with political parties. This means parties will have to transfer powers to the worker level and strengthen their set-up on the village or neighbourhood level.”

Crunching numbers

As per data received from the local government department, 13,035,699 registered voters, including 7,438,796 men and 5,596,903 women can exercise their right to vote and elect 42,858 representatives across 24 districts excluding Kohistan. Elections will not be held in that particular district as its demarcation is a matter in court.

In total 3,052 candidates will be elected for district and tehsil/town councils, while 39,806 representatives will take a seat at village and neighborhood councils. The government will establish 11,117 polling stations to conduct elections and each voter has to cast seven votes for general, women, minorities, peasants and workers candidates.

At least 134,324 polling staff would be on duty, including 11,261 presiding officers, 92,255 assistant presiding officers and 30,808 polling officers at 30,377 booths.

For the safety of all

According to official documents, copies of which are available with The Express Tribune, the police department has declared 2,837 polling stations highly sensitive and 3,940 sensitive and 4,340 as normal.

For security arrangements, the government needs to deploy 110,184 personnel. However, only 68,115 are available for security duty.

To fill in the gaps, officials of the police and home departments proposed the government deploy additional forces of 6,000 Frontier Constabulary personnel, 2,500 policemen from Azad Jammu and Kashmir police, 500 from Gilgit-Baltistan and 18,559 from other departments of the government.

The government will need to supply 9,220 vehicles for the polling process and security arrangements, which would cost almost Rs200 million.

Display of weapons would be banned and control rooms will be established at the divisional and district level. When The Express Tribune asked K-P Local Government Secretary Jamil Ahmad about the shortfall of security personnel, he said the information was “baseless”.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2015.