Local Government Bill 2013 – approve it already!

Finally, the recommended Punjab Local Government (LG) Bill 2013 was laid in the Punjab Assembly (PA) for general discussion and approval.
The PA’s Special Committee II presented its final recommendations report on bill in the house for further discussion and recommendations on Monday.
The opposition legislators will submit their suggestions and amendments in the house to improve the law while a general debate on the law will start tomorrow (Wednesday).
The Special Committee II’s Convener Abdul Razaque Dhillon presented a report based on the committee’s recommendations. In the report, the committee said that in pursuance of Article 32 and 140-A of the Constitution, the new LG system was proposed to be established so that individual local governments at urban and rural levels could be formed by empowering them to shoulder the political, administrative and financial responsibilities.
The committee suggested that the delimitations of union councils could be done wherever it seemed necessary to facilitate the masses’ grievances. The committee recommended the local government’s union council to comprise of a directly elected chairman, vice-chairman, six general members, two female members on reserve seats and one peasant member in the rural union council or one worker member in urban union council on a reserve seat. One youth member and one non-Muslim member on reserve seat where at least 200 non-Muslim voters were registered were also suggested.
The district council would consist of all the chairmen of the union councils and shall additionally include indirectly elected individuals (on reserve seats) by the chairman and the members of the rural union councils present and voting.
15 female members, one technocrat, a youth member and five non-Muslim members would also be included in the council.
Metropolitan Corporations shall consist of all the chairmen of union councils in the district and shall include indirectly elected (on reserve seats) by the chairman and the members of the rural union councils present and by voting. 25 females, five workers, three technocrat, two youngsters and 10 non-Muslim members would also be included.
Municipal Corporations would consist of all the chairmen of union councils in the area and shall include indirectly elected (on reserve seats) by the chairman and the members of the rural union councils present and by voting. Two worker members, two technocrat members, one youth member and five non-Muslim members would also be included.
During the PA session, the house unanimously adopted a resolution and vehemently slammed an armed attack on a private channel in Karachi and urged the Sindh government to arrest the perpetrators of the incident.
The resolution moved by opposition lawmaker Mian Aslam Iqbal condemned firing on the office of the Express News channel. “The attack is not just on an office rather it is an attempt to scare entire media community,” it added.
The resolution asked the Sindh government to ensure the protection of working journalists and of media houses. Earlier, journalists from the press gallery boycotted the assembly session and held a protest demonstration at the stairs of the assembly building. Later, they returned to the press gallery after assurance from Provincial Health Minister Tahir Khalil Sindhu. The PA Speaker, however, constituted a four-member committee in this regard.
CIVIL SOCIETY FORUM HIGHLIGHTS FLAWS: The recently proposed LG system is contrary to the spirit of Pakistan’s Constitution and is illegal and totally opposed to the basic principles of democracy. In Punjab, the local governments should be awarded political, administrative and financial authority and it should be ensured that power is devolved to the lower level in the true sense of the word.
These observations were made at a consultation organized by the ‘Civil Society Forum for Local Governance’. The forum members shared their reservations against the Punjab government’s LG Act.
The forum constituted of representatives of civil society organizations, media and lawyers including Salman Abid, Dawood Saqlain, Um-e-Laila Azhar, Fauzia Waqar, Anwar Husain, Abdullah Malik, Zakir Shaheen, Advocate Iftikhar Bukhari and Mumtaz Mughal.
The participants of the consultation urged the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) to take a suo moto notice in this regard and to make it binding on the Punjab government to design the LG system in accordance with the Article 140-A of the Constitution.
The forum also urged the Punjab government to announce party based polls for the local government as the PML-N had agreed to do so under the Charter of Democracy it had signed in the past.