Since the administration has not complied with their requests, which include the release of development funding and the restoration of their powers within the allotted period, thousands of elected local body members from throughout the province will begin an agitation on Monday.
On February 17, the mayors, chairmen, and council members of local bodies will demonstrate outside the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, as they have done in the past. On February 25, the province’s highways will be stopped.
It is important to note that on January 1st and 2nd, police blocked the main GT Road in order to release development funds and restore their curtailed powers, and they used powerful tear gas against members of local bodies for two days in a row.
When four provincial ministers—Minister for Local Government Arshad Ayub Khan, Minister for Education Faisal Tarakai, Minister for Revenue and State Nazir Abbasi, and Special Assistant to Chief Minister Rangraiz Khan—promised to meet their demands within 20 days, they later canceled their protest.
Taimur Kamal, the coordinator of the Local Council Association, informed Dawn that if the provincial administration and a ministerial jirga did not meet their requests, representatives of local bodies will begin protest once more.
He claimed that two election phases in December 2021 and March 2022, respectively, established the two-tier local government structure, which consists of tehsil and village and neighborhood councils.
According to him, 29,960 local body members—including general, youth, peasant, and minority council members—were elected. According to him, the province has 131 mayors, 131 chairmen of tehsil councils, and 4,212 heads of village and neighborhood councils.
According to him, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Act of 2013 required the provincial government to set aside 20% of the funding from the Annual Development Program for local body initiatives. According to him, the local bodies’ portion of the budget was Rs27 billion in the current fiscal year, Rs33 billion in the budgetary year 2022–2023 and Rs34 billion in the fiscal year 2023–2024.
But according to Mr. Kamal, “not a single penny has been released to local bodies out of their share of the development funds.”The Local Government Act must be implemented in its entirety, and the LG Rules of Business must be framed in accordance with Section 112 of the law, in addition to the release of finances and the restoration of authorities. Additionally, they call for the creation of offices for devolved departments on tehsil and village council levels, particularly in tribal districts.
“The province’s citizens are the ultimate victims of the refusal of development money, which has literally brought municipal and social services to a standstill. According to Mr. Kamal, the performance of devolved departments has also been impacted by the lack of funding.
He claimed that the members of the local government had been unsuccessfully protesting for their demands for the past three years. He claimed that on December 5, the province administration disbursed Rs3.5 billion to tehsil chairmen who supported Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf while disregarding those who supported opposition parties.
The provincial administration returned the released monies when opposition parties protested outside Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi. The majority of the funds had gone to the ruling party’s mayors and tehsil chairpersons.According to Mr. Kamal, the administration met with representatives from local bodies following each protest, but no problem was fixed.
According to a statement from the Local Council Association, thousands of local government members would travel to Peshawar on February 17 despite the heaviest bombardment, baton charges, and arrests in the city’s history.
For three years, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s local government system has been in a state of paralysis. People are having more issues locally as a result of the lack of development funds. Employees of the tehsil municipal administration frequently do not receive their salaries on time.
