HYDERABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) Sindh general secretary Sardar Abdul Rahim has asked the Sindh government to repeal the Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Law, 2021 and then expect talks with opposition parties for necessary amendments. He said the law was aimed at allowing Sindh government to commit corruption.

The PML-F leader was speaking at a news conference at the local press club on Monday along with other senior party colleagues including Zafarullah Arain and Rafiq Magsi.

He said the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) bulldozed the bill in the Sindh Assembly on the basis of its majority. All other stakeholders have rejected it because it will allow corruption at all levels of governance and deprive local bodies of their authority.

Opposition parties gearing up for joint protest: Sardar Rahim

“The Article 140-A of the Constitution is quite clear about giving political, administrative and financial authority to local government institutions. Instead of devolving more powers to LGs, their authority has been curtailed,” he argued.

Had powers for checking price-hike been delegated to LGs, they must have been bale to control prices at mohalla level, he said. “Same goes for sewerage, drinking water and sanitation issues, he added.

Sardar Rahim pointed out that under the new law, a notification issued by the section officer of local government had to be adopted by local councils and provincial government had the authority to reject anything approved by LGs.

He said this law was not against any community but the entire province.

He said the PML-F had started its campaign against the controversial bill and now it would be holding a provincial level meeting in Sukkur on Jan 4 to devise a strategy.

He said that opposition parties in the assembly had decided to table an alternate bill to show that how a true LG law should look like. He said that not only municipal corporations, but LGs of smaller cities should be upgraded under such a law.

Finance commission

Sardar Rahim demanded immediate formation of provincial finance commission (PFC) on the pattern of the national one (NFC). “Government should transfer funds to districts under the proposed PFC under the same formula being applied in the NFC in order to provide amenities to people,” he asserted.

He said that all opposition parties had been opposing the law. Efforts were under way to unite them on one platform to get it repealed, he added.

Answering a question, he said Information Minister Saeed Ghani knew that the opposition parties were gearing up for anti-government protests and that was why he had started asking them to hold talks with government on amendments to the law. “The time for consultation has already passed. Government should have consulted opposition when the bill was being tabled in the assembly but it avoided this on account of its majority in the house,” he said.

The PML-F leader noted that the bill was not tabled in the relevant standing committee of the house which was the appropriate forum for a discussion between the ruling and opposition parties.

He advised the PPP not to remain intoxicated over its majority in the house, and reminded it of 90s when it was restricted to 17 seats in the National Assembly. “No one knows if time comes when you are rendered without any seat in the elected houses.

So you should not be unmindful of this,” he remarked.

He also noted that the PPP government did not form the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). “If the federal government had done something wrong, it doesn’t provide a justification to PPP to do the same, because two wrongs don’t make one right,” he said. Sardar Rahim said the opposition parties would now talk to the PPP in a language it understood better.

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2022