Balochistan Local Government Act a Governance Roadmap by Locals Participation-dr

Accountable Governance for Development- Setting an Agenda Beyond 2015

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BALOCHISTAN LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT: A GOVERNANCE ROADMAP BY

LOCALS’ PARTICIPATION

1. Sana-ur-Rehman Sheikh,

Assistant Professor, Institute of Management Sciences, University of Balochistan, Quetta,

Pakistan

2. Saubia Ramzan,

Assistant Professor, Institute of Management Sciences, University of Balochistan, Quetta,

Pakistan

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR

Sana-ur-Rehman, Assistant Professor, Institute of Management Sciences, University

of Balochistan, Sariab Road, Quetta, Pakistan.

Email: [email protected] cell. No. +92-331-7005869


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BALOCHISTAN LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT: A GOVERNANCE ROADMAP BY

LOCALS’ PARTICIPATION

ABSTRACT:

Balochistan being a least developed province of Pakistan has experienced many governance

models. Balochistan Local Government (BLG) Act, 2010 is the latest of all, which is expected

to play fundamental role in the development of Balochistan. The main objective of the local

bodies system is the involvement of local people for smooth delivery of quality services and

governance at local level to provide a way forward through which civil society gets its due

recognition by the composition of local government. The governance process of local bodies

starts by identifying deficiencies in the delivery of services at union councils, tehsil councils,

town councils, city district councils and district councils of the Province and ends up with the

provision of quality of life for a common man. This process is attained through continuous

monitoring and supervision of the basic functions such as periodical local government

election, managing transactions (succession of the properties, assets and liabilities), settlement

of disputes through Musalihat Anjuman, law and order situation and local government finance

with the involvement of citizen community boards.

The process appears to be perfect, but even after the approval of BLG Act, 2010 by

Balochistan Assembly; the Act was practiced with relatively less than its absolute spirit. This

paper tries to highlight the Act’s implementation extent in term of its true local participants’

control and involvement.

METHODOLOGY:

Literature review helped to understand the matter. Relevant available secondary data provided

a gist of BLG Ordinance, 2001 and BLG Act, 2010.


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CONTRIBUTION OF THE PAPER:

This paper highlights the salient features of the BLG Act, 2010, performance of the Act,

amendments in BLG ordinance, 2001 and outcomes of the decade long implementation of

BLG ordinance, 2001 in the province.

KEY WORDS:

Local Governance, Locals engagement in social progress, Balochistan Local Government

Act, Participatory Governance and Democracy


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INTRODUCTION

Today, we are living in a world of more than seven billion population. Scarcity of natural and

physical resources is mounting new-fangled challenges for the equitable distribution of

resources for this gigantic population. Governments are also facing huge challenges to bridge

the gap between urban and rural divide in term of distribution of basic social facilities. Many

social scientists advocate that business as usual mechanism of centralized governance will not

be effective in today’s era of globalization. The supply and demand actors of the society (as

shown in Table 1) have to work very closely with each other for the effective delivery of

services. The widely acceptable solution to bring supply and demand actors together is

decentralized governance. Globally, grass root administration and delivery of services are

achieved through elected local governments. In such a mode of governance budgets are made,

resources are allocated and spent for citizens with the help of widespread partnership of local

citizen. Technically speaking parliamentarians should have least involvements in the affairs of

local governance. Their main task should be limited to the formulation of laws, while it is the

prime job of local governments to formulate the developmental strategies and allocation of

funds under the guidance of such laws at local levels.

Table 1: Supply and demand actors of a society

Supply Side Actors Demand Side Actors

Government Citizens/ Civil Societies

Public Institutions and Judiciary Consumer Protection Entities

Enterprises / Corporations / Business

Entities

Environmental protections Societies

Non-Governmental Organizations

(NGOs)

Media


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There, always, had been a demand for the local government system in Pakistan and efforts

had been made too. However, it is hard to state that fully functioning and independent local

governments had been in place delivering regular service to the Pakistani public (UNDP,

2012). Pakistan has an interesting history of local government system with three waves of

local governance mechanism, all introduced by military governments. First local government

system of 1959 introduced by president General Ayub Khan, second local government system

of 1979 by General Zia-ul-Haq, and third local government system of 2001 introduced by

General Pervez Musharraf.

Military governments in Pakistan had shown keen interest in setting up local governments,

may be to get the legitimacy of their own rule or to counter the political provincial

governments setup, but local governments had never been fully independent in term of

managerial and financial decisions. Military rulers’ political use of local governments for

their vested interests, sometimes, instigated the mistrust of local people and communities on

such a set up and compelled them to look towards provincial and federal governments for the

fulfilment of their aspirations. On the other hands parliamentarians don’t want to lose control

in their respective constituencies by letting flow of funds and developmental work controlled

through local governments, in general, and before the time of elections in particular. It has

also been observed that parliamentarian intentionally defer the flow of funds for the

developmental activities and get it released just before the election time to cultivate public

sympathy and goodwill for the upcoming elections.

Decentralization and devolution of powers at grass root level has been the key element of

success for many countries. Average population per local government in different developing

countries is shown in Table 2. The average size of the district government in Pakistan, in term

of population, is very larger as compare to other of similar sized countries. On the other hand,

indirect election of district Nazims is also different as compare to other regional countries.


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Table 2: Comparison of Local Governments in some developing countries

Country Number of

Local

Governments

Average Population

per local

Government

Mode of election

of Mayor

Mode of

election of

councilors

Argentina 1,100 30,818 D D

Bolivia 311 27,703 D D

Brazil 4,974 31,222 D D

Colombia 1,034 34,429 D D

Indonesia 370 567,000 I D

Philippines 1,538 490,000 D

Pakistan 101 1,443,000 I D

D: Direct, I: Indirect

Source: (Azfar et al. 1999; Manning et al. 2003)

BALOCHISTAN LOCAL GOVERNMENT ORDINANCE, 2001

Balochistan being a least developed but largest province of Pakistan has experienced many

governance phases. Balochistan Local Government (BLG) Act, 2010 is the latest of all, which

is expected to play fundamental role in the development of Balochistan. The main objective

of the local bodies system is the involvement of the local people for smooth delivery of

quality services and governance at 30 districts in Balochistan (Balochistan White paper, 2012)

to provide a way forward by which civil society gets its due recognition through local

representatives.

General Pervez Musharraf introduced the devolution of power in January 2000 in Pakistan.

Subsequently in order to strengthen the local government system all provincial governments

formulated and implemented the local government ordinance (LGO) in 2001. This paper

looks, in particular, at the key aspects of BLG ordinance 2001 and subsequent 2010 Act in

Balochistan province of Pakistan.


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The governance process of local bodies started in 2001 by identifying the deficiency in

delivery of services at union councils, tehsil councils, town councils, city district councils and

district councils in Balochistan and ended up with the provision of quality of life for a

common man. Process tried to attain continuous monitoring and supervision of the basic

functions such as periodical local government election, managing transactions (succession of

the properties, assets and liabilities), settlements of dispute through Musalihat Anjuman, law

and order situation and local government finance with the involvement of citizen community

boards (CCBs).

STRUCTURE OF LOCAL COUNCILS

According to BLG ordinance 2001 there were three layers of local government

administration: Union councils, Tehsil Councils and District Councils. Union Council (UC)

administration consists of union Nazim, Naib Nazim and at least three union secretaries and

some ancillary staff as required. A Union Council has 21 council members, which include 12

Muslim members elected on general seats, inclusive of four reserved for women, six reserved

for peasants and workers, and one reserved for minority. Each UC is headed by two more

elected members Nazims and Naib Nazims. Tehsil Councils and District Councils are

composed of UC Naib Nazims and Nazims respectively as general members. Nazims of

Tehsil Council and District Councils were indirectly elected by members of all UCs

comprising that Tehsil or District electoral colleges. Initially provincial capital was

considered City District Councils but later on more cities were also given the status of City

District Councils.

Area of Union Council (UC) in rural area varies from the area of UC in city district or UC

with urban characteristics. Basically the distribution of UC in a district was based on

Population. Utmost care was considered so that population is more or less uniform in all UCs

of a district. Area of a UC in tehsil might comprise the whole patwar circle. UC with urban

characteristics comprises the whole census block defined for the population census.

Some of the salient features of BLG ordinance 2001 are:


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Prominent representation of local elected members in the management of Union,

Tehsil and District administration.

Two third members of UCs were directly elected while the rest was elected by indirect

elections with the help of directly elected members.

By giving due representation to women, peasants, workers and minorities,

marginalized community members were given due respect and made part of decision

making.

Administrative government officials were made to report and accountable to elected

District Nazims.

Provincial Financial commission (PFC) was constituted for pooling of financial

resources to be allocated for delivery of services at District, Tehsil and Union council

levels.

Decisions related to prioritization of allocation of resources stayed at the hands of

elected officials.

PERFORMANCE OF BLG ORDINANCE 2001

Weak management skills and lack of synchronization between the union, tehsil, district and

provincial administration led the mismanagement of authority and funds utilization at all

levels. As this multi layers management was introduced first time in the province therefore

administrators, bureaucrats and line departments faced difficulty in understanding their

responsibilities, dominions and chain of command.

BALOCHISTAN LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT, 2010

Subsequent to the BLG ordinance 2001, the provincial assembly of Balochistan passed the

Balochistan Local Government Act, 2010 endorsed by the Governor of the province. This Act

is different than BLG ordinance 2001 in certain ways. According to ordinance there were

three tiers of local governments: Union Councils, Tehsil Councils, and District Councils. But

according to BLG Act, 2010 there are two tiers: at first place there are Union Councils for


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rural areas and Municipal or Metropolitan Corporations for urban areas and at second tier

District Councils are in place with memberships of associated Union Councils. The key

aspects of BLG Act 2010 are as follows (UNDP 2012).

There is no Tehsil level of local governing councils in the province.

Members of a UC, which were 21 in BLG Ordinance 2001, have been reduced to 7-

15, as determined on the basis of population ranging 1000 to 1500 persons.

General members of District Councils are equal to the number of UCs in that district.

One important characteristic of BLG Act, 2010 is establishment of Divisional

Coordination Committees. These committees comprise elected members of District

Councils, Metropolitan or Municipal Corporations, head of the line departments and

collectors of districts. These committees are chaired by Commissioner and are

responsible for approving all budgets of local elected bodies.

With such kind of amendments commissioners (bureaucrats) are again superseding the elected

local government officials. So the elected members have to report commissioners.

UNDERLYING REASONS OF NON-IMPLEMENTATION OF BLG ACT 2010

According to UNDP (2012) report 45.5% household reported dissatisfaction with Union

Councils performance which is a not a buoyant number even after the local governance in

place since last one decade.

National Finance Commission (NFC) Award is the distribution of financial resources by the

federal government among the provinces of Pakistan on annual basis. Certain type of taxes

collected by each province are pooled together and then distributed among the province

according to a set formula delineated by the federal government. The share of the Balochistan

province was increased in 7th NFC Award 2011 from 5.11% to 9.09% (Jalaludin 2012;


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Balochistan White Paper 2012), which is quite a substantial increase of the availability of the

funds. This increase in NFC Award for provincial government is far greater than any funds

available under local government, and this factor may be the reason for less interest in local

government as a conduit of development funds (UNDP 2012).

CONCLUSION

The key lessons learned from this theoretical review are as follows.

The public accessibility towards the members of local government (administrators and

bureaucrats) is easy but there is high level of corruption and less check and balance and

capacity UNDP (2012).

According to the revised setup after BLG Act 2010, local government led by administrators

(bureaucrats) is relatively high on capacity and have certain level of transparency, but on the

other hand there is sense of antipathy among elected members to be ruled by bureaucrats.

Despite of all sort of criticism of BLG ordinance and Act, the elected local government

system is considered the best system of local governance because of the general public sense

of belongingness and participation.

Elected members and administrators lacked financial expertise and technical capabilities in

general. There is a dire need of nurturing and capacity building of local government

participants and associates.


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Large size of the councils’ constituencies is another hurdle for the smooth delivery of services

at grass root level.

The 18th constitutional amendment (www.na.gov.pk/en/bills) has shifted legislative and

executive authority from federation to the provinces. So now the future of local government is

in the hands of elected provincial members, as Local Government is purely a provincial

subject.

If term of office of the elected provincial and federal politicians is short so there has been seen

lack of priority towards the Local Government and improvement within that set up.

As many individuals are involved in decentralized governmental set up, it requires enhanced

accountability of policy makers and all participants in local governance setup (Manning et al.,

2003).

The overall economic situation of the county is gray. In 2008 total Pakistani debt was 5.5

Trillion Rupees (Values are in Pakistani Rupees.) which has swelled to more than Rs. 12

Trillion in 2012 (Dawn 2012; PGF 2012). Under the situation of continuous weakening of the

Pakistani rupee against dollar, significant decrease in foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow,

and huge payments due under debt servicing to IMF in December 2012 (Geo New 2012), it

has become difficult to bring the country’s economy right on the track. Consequently, there is

forecast of less availability of funds for the developmental projects at local levels in years to

come. So, local governments have to be careful in devising developmental plans. They have

to develop some areas of synergy and prefer austerity measures in future as democracy does

not means only elections it is rather about delivering.


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BIODATA OF AUTHOR

Dr. Sana-ur-Rehman Sheikh

holds PhD in International Business from Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok. He has

been associated with Institute of Management Sciences, University of Balochistan Quetta,

Pakistan since last thirteen years, actively involved in teaching graduate level students at

University. His areas on interest are strategy, policy and corporate social responsibility

(CSR).


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REFERENCES

Azfar, Omar, Kähkönen, S., Lanyi, A., & Meagher. P,. (1999). "Decentralization,

Governance, and Public Services: The Impact of Institutional Arrangements". Center for

Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector. College Park MD. Retrieved from

(http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/Colleges/BSOS/Depts/IRIS/IRIS/docs/wp255.pdf).

Balochistan Local Government (BLG) Ordinance , (Ordinance no XVIII of 2001).(2001)

Balochistan White Paper 2012. (2012) Government of Balochistan, Retreved from www.balochistan.gov.pk/.../912-white-paper-2012-2013.html

Dawn. (2012).Retrieved from www.dewn.com

Geo News. (2012). Retrieved December 27, 2012, from www.geo.tv

Baloch, J., (2012, June 06, Wednesday). “Reform in Balochistan”. International The News.

Retrieved November 14, 2012, from http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-11-

112629-Reform-in-Balochistan

Manning N., Porter D., Charlton J., Cyan M., Hasnain Z., (2003). Devolution in Pakistan-

preparing for service delivery improvements. A working paper prepared for the Forum on

Intergovernmental Relations and services Delivery in Pakistan.

Pakistan Governance forum (PGF) 2012. An initiative of the researchers, (7th Ed., Vol 7).

UNDP (2012). Social Audit of Local Governance and Delivery of Public Services. Pakistan

National Report. United Nation Development Programme. Retrieved from

http//www.undp.org.pk

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