The Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) Punjab Parliamentary Party has prepared more suggestions for Punjab Local Government Bill 2013 to ensure effective citizens participation and accountability.
Aamir Sultan Cheema, the PML-Q legislator, gave briefing to the media in the opposition leader’s chamber. As per proposals, Section 136 of the PLG 2013 pertaining to ‘Transparency’ granting right of information to the citizens may to be amended to bind the local governments to appoint information officers at each tier of the local government.
He said that a quota for women in reserved seats for farmers, workers and non-Muslims is provided; similarly home-based workers should be included in this quota at union council level.
The office of zila mohtasib needs to be replicated at the tehsil/town level by creating offices of the tehsil/town mohtasibs. Notwithstanding the fact that zila mohtasibs have not been appointed as required by the law, the sheer ambit of the functioning of local governments is so vast that it would be very difficult for a zila mohtasib to effectively dispose of all the complaints regarding government functionaries. Office of the zila mohtasib is likely to be over-burdened and would hence lead to slow redressal of public complaints. Moreover, large size of many districts would make it extremely difficult for the affectees to travel distances to follow up for complaints. Therefore, it is proposed that similar offices be created at the Tehsil/Town level which is the last administrative tier of government to ensure the availability of quick redressal forums at the local level.
Appointment of the citizens/civil society members in the Provincial Local Government Commission and the Provincial Finance Commission need to be made more transparent through enacting necessary changes which may be modelled after the appointment procedure devised for the ‘zila mohtasib’ by PLGO 2001. Instead of making the appointment of commission members an arbitrary affair, a transparent process is to be adopted so that credible and competent members may take positions in these apex bodies. Constitution of selection committees with clearly defined criteria for selection is likely to answer the concerns raised by the civil society and will curtail the discretionary exercise of powers by the government functionaries.
Provisions of PLGO 2001 and rules regarding CCBs need to be re-examined in the light of progress made on the front of participatory and community driven development. For now, it is being suggested that amendments be made with respect to membership of CCBs, cost share to be submitted, preparation and submission of project proposal, and operation and maintenance of the completed projects. The available literature suggests that the aforementioned areas have caused set back to the success of the historic concept of CCBs and has also resulted in blocking huge sums of development budgets across the province. Sub-committees may be formed or provision for the formation of such committees may be added so that people participate in the functioning of their elected governments.
Provision needs to be made in the law where the Monitoring Committees created by the local councils are authorised to create sub-committees for the purpose of monitoring and evaluation of the working of government functionaries. The role of such committees may be extended to oversight of the development projects being carried out in a local council.
