Flimsy PPP-PSP pact doesn’t even hold a candle to weak agreement with JI

Nothing substantial appears to have resulted from the agreement between Sindh’s ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and former Karachi mayor Mustafa Kamal’s Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) on the disputed local government law despite Kamal’s claim to have pressured the PPP into accepting 98 per cent of the PSP’s demands.

The PSP’s jubilation seems uncalled for because the few concrete steps that the PPP has to take after its agreement with Kamal’s party had already been decided in the ruling party’s prior agreement with the Jamaat-e-Islami that was reached over a week ago after the JI’s four-week sit-in outside the provincial assembly.

An apparently irrational demand of the PSP that was accepted by the PPP was the representation of elected LG officials in federally mandated institutions.

The provincial government agreed to implement an LG system in the entire province in the true spirit of Article 140-A of the constitution, and devolve the political, administrative and financial powers to the elected representatives.

The article states that each province will establish an LG system and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibilities and authorities to the elected representatives of the local bodies.

The problem was the article’s implementation, according to Advocate Zubair Abro, who has expertise in land and environment cases. “The PPP is already constitutionally bound to implement Article 140-A. It would’ve made no difference whether or not it had been a part of the agreement.”

The PPP government agreed to activate the Provincial Finance Commission (PFC) in its true spirit with the composition of its members and further create a divisible pool for smoothly running the LG affairs. Moreover, states the agreement, the Octroi Zila Tax (OZT) will not be treated as part of the divisible pool.

Section 113(3) of the Sindh Local Government Act (SLGA) 2013 states that before making recommendations, the PFC may consult anyone, and will take into account the principles of population, backwardness, need and performance of a council.

The law also states that the mayor of a metropolitan corporation and the chairman of a district council will be members of the PFC, along with the finance and LG ministers, the finance and LG secretaries, two members of the PA and others.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s (MQM) Muhammad Hussain told The News that the divisible pool means that the PFC will be handed over to the local councils based on their population, service infrastructure, development needs, area and performance, which he said is already mentioned in a 2007 notification of the Sindh Finance Department.

The problem, he pointed out, is of implementation. Moreover, he explained, the agreement makes no mention of the formula of the divisible pool.

As for the OZT, both the SLGA 2013 and the SLGA 2021 make no mention of it. The OZT is a tax the federal government collects from the goods that enter or exit the city for the purpose of trade. The Centre collects it and then transfers it to the provincial government.

The MQM’s former mayor Wasim Akhtar claimed that the provincial government had never disbursed the due share of the OZT to the city government.

He said the government was supposed to pay some Rs60 billion to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) and the district municipal corporations (DMCs) in terms of their OZT share.

Every year there is a 15 per cent increase in the OZT collection, which the provincial government never gave to the KMC and the DMCs, he pointed out.

In their agreement with the PSP, the PPP has agreed to give leading a role to the local bodies, the mayor and the chairman in all the development authorities of the province.

They include the Karachi Development Authority, the Lyari Development Authority, the water & sewerage boards, the solid waste management boards, the building control authorities and the master plan departments. All these points had already been agreed upon in the PPP-JI pact for empowering the local bodies.

However, even before the JI sit-in, the PPP government had made the mayor the chairperson of the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) and the co-chairman of the Karachi Water & Sewerage Board (KWSB) through the SLGA 2021.

The SSWMB Act 2021 was passed for this purpose, and according to it, there will be six divisional boards of the SSWMB for Karachi, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Sukkur, Shaheed Benazirabad and Larkana. The mayor of these divisions will be chairman of their respective boards.

But there is a catch: there will be a steering committee over all these boards, and that committee will be headed by the LG minister.

The chairman of the divisional board will look after the operational aspects of the SSWMB, while the policy and financial aspects will be in the steering committee’s domain.

A Sindh government official said the KWSB’s board will more or less be of the same structure. The PPP and the PSP did not specify the leading role the mayor and the elected chairman will get in all the development authorities.

The PPP-PSP pact also states that the mayor will be responsible for administering medical and engineering colleges; universities; primary and secondary education; primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare; and the departments that had been taken away from the local government through the SLGA 2021.

In the PPP-JI agreement it had already been decided that the local bodies’ health and educational institutions will be returned to them, while the Karachi Medical & Dental College will also be handed back to the KMC.

The PPP-PSP agreement states that the provincial government has agreed to give the LG representation in universities and technical or professional institutions, electricity supply companies, the Pakistan Railways, the Port Qasim Authority (PQA), the Karachi Port Trust (KPT), the Sui Southern Gas Company, broadcasting and television corporations, the Auqaf administration and the evacuee trust boards.

All of these departments are federally mandated. In the boards of all the development and land authorities, including the Sindh Building Control Authority, the PQA and the KPT, the mayor is already a member by virtue of his position.

Kamal told The News that the province has a stake in all the departments mentioned in the agreement, and they will help the LG get their effective role even in the federally mandated departments.

When asked about the mayor’s representation in the KPT’s and the PQA’s boards, he said that it is important, and they will make sure that the provincial government gives the mayor an effective role. He warned of resuming street protests if the government did not implement the agreement.

The Sindh government has also agreed to give powers to the LG to recover taxes in their respective areas. The pact also mentions the KPT Act, which states that the port trust has to pay certain amount of the cess to the KMC, and the same has to be implemented by the PQA.

Cess is a certain percentage of the taxes collected from Karachi that the federal and provincial governments are liable to pay to the KMC. It is already mentioned in Schedule-V of the SLGA 2013. Akhtar claimed that the KMC was never paid a single paisa under the head of cess during his tenure.

According to Abro, if the provincial government did not get their agreement with the PSP approved by the cabinet, it will hold no legal value.