LG reps launch protest drive today to reclaim powers

PESHAWAR: The Local Government (LG) representatives announced on Monday to launch a movement from today to get back the powers the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government took from them by amending the relevant act.

The drive would start today by staging protest rallies at neighbourhood and union councils and a massive protest would be held in the provincial capital.The mayors and councillors would stage rallies across the province and display banners at the union councils and neighbourhood councils against the KP government’s decision to take back powers from the elected representatives and hand the same to bureaucracy. The decision was taken at a meeting which was chaired by Capital City Metropolitan Government Mayor Zubair Ali and attended by other mayors and chairmen.

The participants of the meeting believed that the PTI government was taking revenge on the public for the humiliating defeat it had suffered in the LG elections arranged in the province in two phases.

They said empowering the bureaucracy instead of public representatives showed the government nefarious designs.The LG representatives rejected the amendment to the LG Act and announced that they would hold protest rallies across the province besides moving the apex court against the efforts by the PTI government to cut their powers.

They said the court would be requested to declare the amendments to the LG Act as unconstitutional because the powers of the elected LG representatives could not be handed over to the bureaucracy. Speaking at the meeting, Peshawar’s Mayor Zubair Ali said all members had contested elections from the platforms of respective parties but once elected their sole purpose should be to serve the masses through collective efforts.

He said that elections were held under the LG Act 2019 but the PTI government amended the act after losing elections to make elected representatives subservient to the bureaucracy.The mayor said the amendment not only showed the ill-intentions of the PTI government but was also against the Supreme Court’s judgment which had directed the government to hold the LG elections.

Zubair Ali said the PTI government did not take oath from representatives for four months. “This delay showed that the government wanted to protect its own interests instead of serving the people of the province,” he lamented.