City mayors to be directly elected in Punjab: Imran

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan vowed on Monday to devolve powers to local bodies and said direct elections would be held for mayors under the new local government law in Punjab.

Addressing a news conference, flanked by Chief Minister Punjab Usman Buzdar and Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mehmood Khan, here at the PM Office, he spoke at length about the newly adopted local government system in Punjab, which aimed at “taking the government to the people” and announced a two-tiered election across Punjab.

Giving details of the new Punjab Local Government Act 2019, Khan said a direct election would be held in 22,000 village councils in Punjab for equal distribution of revenue and indiscriminate development of the entire province. “People need governance,” the Prime Minister said and added the new concept was brought to the fore after lengthy deliberations and study of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa local government system and similar systems in vogue internationally.

He said it was for the first time that the federal government was handing over its powers to the local bodies. “Our cities are like a heap of rubble. We want our cities to grow and develop, like those in the rest of the world. We want them to generate their own funds and manage issues on their own.”

Khan said under the new law passed by Punjab, the mayor of a city, town and Tehsil would be elected directly — in a first in South Asia. He said under the new system, a mayor would be required to get a direct mandate from a large number of voters.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan received one million votes, while Erdogan also received a million votes to become mayor of Istanbul. He said the new mayor would bring in his own team to manage the city affairs and would have to work hard to deliver.

The new process would do away with the existing practice of using money in “purchasing loyalties” for votes.

When asked whether he was facing resistance from the parliamentarians who used to get the funds for local development, Khan said “change is resisted by vested interests,” and added: “We have to defeat them.”

“Nowhere in the world the MNAs, MPAs are given development funds,” Khan said and pointed that in the past that practice led to duplication and poor management of funds.“We have learned from experiences and found out that the village councilor was far more effective and had a better understanding of the local issues.”

He said some of the changes had been adapted from the existing local government system in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the new law in Punjab. Khan said the new local bodies system would be viable only if it was able to generate revenue. He said the provinces did not have enough capacity to collect funds under the 18th Amendment. He said the viability of that amendment also depended on the success of revenue collection, and hoped the new local government system would be able to meet the revenue shortfall by being more proactive and collecting the taxes.

The Prime Minister, speaking about tapping the potential of cities, said under the devolution program; urban planning and regulation — like LDA, MDA, RDA, water and sewerage (WASA), waste disposal companies, infrastructure and roads, primary, middle and high schools, public health and emergency planning would fall under the local body institutions. He said all the functions would come under the authority of the mayor with checks by the council.

Mayors would collect taxes and spend on their cities, modernising the property tax regime to realise its full potential.

He said 22,000 Village Council elections would be held on open list system and the member scoring highest vote would head it. There would be a direct election of women, peasants, workers and minority. He pointed out the average population size of the now defunct Union councils was 22,000, while now the average size of the Panchayat would be only around 3,500. He was optimist it would bring governance closer to the people.

Mentioning functions of Panchayat, the Prime Minister said it would look after water supply, sewerage, solid waste management, street lights, births, deaths, marriage registration, dispute resolution, community mobilization, sports and assistance. He was optimist the new system would bring self governance to every organic community. A total of 372 rural Tehsil, cities and towns would get self-governance. Around143 additional areas would get self-governance compared to 2015 and the right of self-governance would extend to 22,000 Mouzas and 2,500 urban neighbourhoods.