An interview with ED, Local Councils Association of the Punjab'Provinces have still not staffed third-tier institutions'

Anwar Hussain is the Executive Director of Local Councils Association of the Punjab (LCAP), having been associated with the organisation since its formation in 2005. LCAP is one of the four provincial associations, one in each province that represents the interests of local governments and third-tier politicians in a non-political fashion. One of the many objectives of LCAP is to provide a collective forum for local government officials to interact and learn by sharing their experiences, and develop best practices.

In this interview with BR Research, Anwar talks about the state of local governments and the issues and loopholes they face in the country. Following are the edited excerpts:

BR Research: How do you view the state of local governments in Pakistan in comparison to other countries of the world?

Anwar Hussain: Globally local governments are truly empowered; elected representatives of local governments get to decide on their projects under the premise that if they don't deliver then people will not elect them the next time around. There are of course various mechanisms for accountability of those local government officials, and there are mechanisms for citizen engagement and consultation whereby they take views from the public, the actual citizens of the area they represent.

However, mechanisms such as pre-budget citizen consultation with the community do not exist in Pakistan's provincial local government laws. In this regard, the Musharraf-era local government law was better since it demanded a pre, and post-budget citizen consultation, and its rules also demanded that council budgets are posted on boards at every major public place such as bus station, or mosques parks. Globally, local governments also have a website where budgetary and other important details are periodically released to the public. In Pakistan, there are no such practices.

Even worse is the fact that Punjab and Sindh have taken away many powers of local government and given them to provincial government. Punjab has more than 50 authorities working under provincial government and run parallel to local government, performing functions that local government are supposed to perform. These include district health and education authorities, transport authority and what not. Sindh has a lot of these as well.

BRR: But the constitution has left it to the provincial government to decide what kind of local government framework they want.

AH: It is true that the constitution of Pakistan does not spell out detail structure of local government framework. But it clearly states in its article 140-A that "each province shall, by law, establish a local government system and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to the elected representatives of the local governments."

Seen in light of the definition of political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority, the existing local government laws in any of the four provinces in Pakistan does not fit the constitutional ideals, although of course some are relatively better or worse than the other in some respects. Because the reading of the constitution's 140-A shows that local councils should be able take its own decisions and be able to finance it on their own. Why should a chairman of the council have to run off to provincial capitals to get the approval of the projects in his or her district?

If local government laws allow for the intervention and approval of deputy commissioner, as is the case in each of the provincial local government laws, then really what authority and independence does local government official has. Similarly, if the laws allow the provincial government to unilaterally review the budgetary allocation decided by local government official, then effectively the law is neither devolving responsibility nor authority to elected representatives of the local governments as is envisaged by the constitution.

BRR: And what has been the state of provincial finance commissions (PFC); have provinces set up PFC staffed with professionals?

AH: None of the provinces have economists, finance and tax experts, and other professionals working as permanent staff in PFC secretariats. This reflects the non-serious approach of the provinces. Provinces have been passing interim awards, which have been passed without the necessary datasets needed to make just distribution. In some cases, the PFC award has been passed even when the commission meeting has not been properly convened.

For instance, throughout the five years of 2013-2018 not a single PFC meeting was held in Punjab. In the absence of a PFC, the provincial government has de facto powers to allocate funds from one district to another as per their discretion. A prime example was the construction of underpass near Siddique trade centre in Gulberg, Lahore. That underpass was being built not from the money allocated to Lahore local government but from Layyah district.

Similarly, local government officials in Sindh complain that they have not been given the powers to work in their local constituencies. They complain that they have to get approvals from provincial government for every little thing; someone from Sukkur will have to come all the way down to Karachi to get approvals from a host of provincial government officials. As a result, local government officials in question and the overall concept of local government system get a bad repute.

If districts get their due share, regional disparities will substantially reduce. But provincial leaders do not seem to appreciate its importance.

BRR: Why is it so that local governments are not adequately represented at the PFC in any of the provinces? Granted that perhaps having all districts heads at the PFC may prove futile but why can't we have an association or any other collective platform to represent the third tier?

AH: We have raised these concerns over and over again across the provinces. Neither the PFC nor the local government commission (LGC) has representation from provincial local council associations. Presently, the PFC members, even those who represent the local government, are chosen on the basis of party affiliation and favouritism so that they are obliged to speak and vote in favour of the provincial government and the party that's ruling in the province. Even the amended local government laws of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa do not have fair basis of representation at the PFC.

On the contrary, local government associations are better represented; our boards have about 40-50 members representing a cross section of the local government officials of the province; from women to minorities to various big/small, rural/urban tiers of local government. Our boards are also ex-officio positions regardless of which party affiliate has won that local government seat.

The government needs to learn from international best practices such as New Zealand's where local government law says that no change in local government laws can be brought about without the consent of the local government association. Likewise, in South Africa, the South African local government association practically drafts local government laws.

BRR: Why is to so that data on municipal finance is not available to the public at large?

AH: That's because the provincial governments do not make those datasets public, even though the rules of business demand it. Even we as local council associations don't have access to it. Nor can researchers, journalists and other civil society stakeholders' access data unless they follow up for months and months, using all kinds of tactics including the Right to Information Law.

In some cases, provincial governments have not even made public their up-to-date amended versions of the local government law. They just don't want to share because information is power, and it allows people to question.

I fundamentally believe that this country can never develop and prosper unless all types of socio-economic and public finance datasets are periodically produced and released for public dissemination, because Pakistanis cannot grow together unless the stakeholders iron out differences, and you cannot do that unless there is transparent data available which forms the basis of debates and discussions to iron out the differences.

BRR: But why don't local council association have it, after all it's your members who are getting and spending those monies, whatever little it may be.

AH: First of all, those datasets are in hard copies and ill-kept, which means it is difficult to put all of it in a neat well classified time series manner. Secondly, local council associations are in a fragile state because local governments are not working in continuity. So far, the associations have been mainly funded by donors. However, we have recently negotiated with KP that their local government department will deduct membership fees of various local governments at source as per the various fee structures and directly deposit it with KP's local council association. That will result in better flow of money.

BRR: The accountability mechanism at the local level appears weak. Is decentralisation of local government commissions (LGC) the solution?

AH: As per local government laws, LGCs should conduct annual inspection of local governments and submit its report to provincial governments. But this has never happened. LGC are in fact unfunctional; they don't have a secretariat with proper permanent staff comprising of finance, legal, taxation, audit and other professionals. At present, LGCs only moves into action when someone in provincial government has to extract some favours from someone or undermine a local government official who belongs to the opposition party.

The solution is to set up LGC at district level, instead of being centralised. This will allow them to keep a check and balance on local government on periodic basis. LGC should help out local governments in terms of how to follow the rules of business, instead of only doing witch hunting. It should move around the district on a day to day basis.

Because of its geographical proximity the citizens can also make a complaint to that commission in case a local government official is doing something wrong - otherwise they will have to go all the way to provincial headquarters. I also think that LGC composition also needs to be reviewed as well, because LG ministers don't have time to sit on all these meetings.

BRR: Why aren't citizens demanding effective local government?

AH: There is indeed a serious shortage of citizen demand for local governments. At the one end, citizens are largely poor and uneducated and as a consequence they don't understand and appreciate the importance of local governments, nor do they even know about their own rights as a citizen. At the other end, powerful interest groups within the society do not raise a demand for stronger local government since they are already well connected and are getting various endowments from the state.

Then, of course, is the interventions by parliamentarians both in the form of MPA/MNA funds and otherwise. The elite know their problems will be addressed by MNA/MPAs they are connected to since those MNA/MPA have funds and enjoy clout over the bureaucracy and other government departments. The citizens at large know that even for simple things like road repair, it is best to go the MNA/MPA since they are directly getting funds from provincial and federal development spending programmes, whereas provincial lawmakers are not making adequate budgetary allocations to local governments.

So when citizens know that local government representatives are not truly empowered then why would they even engage with them in a manner that eventually transpires into a practical understanding of why and how local government are beneficial to citizens' day to day lives.