The Sindh government will soon issue a set of guidelines to the union committees and union councils in the province to identify the potential areas where these municipal agencies could spend specified portions of their increased share of the Octroi Zilla Tax (OZT).
Sindh Local Government Minister Saeed Ghani stated this on Friday while responding to different call-attention notices submitted by concerned lawmakers in the Sindh Assembly. He said the monthly OZT share being given to the municipal agencies in the province had been increased by the Sindh government to strengthen them financially and increase their financial capacity to disburse salaries and pensions to their employees on time.
He informed the House that the monthly OZT share of an urban union committee had been increased from Rs500,000 to Rs1.2 million while a rural union council was not getting Rs1 million OZT share.
He said the union committees and councils had been asked to limit the monthly salary bill of their employees to Rs400,000 so that funds could be spared for small uplift works in their respective jurisdictions.
The LG minister said the municipal agencies would compile monthly reports on the spending of the OZT share to overcome their financial crisis. Ghani told the House that the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, union councils, union committees and other municipal agencies had been given political, administrative and financial powers as per the spirit of the Article 140-A of the Constitution.
He clarified that the Article 140-A of the Constitution did not explain to what extent political, financial, and administrative authority should be devolved to the municipal agencies. It was wrong to assume that the elected local government representatives in Sindh did not have any authority, he remarked.
He said the law governing the Karachi Water & Sewerage Corporation had been amended to empower the city’s mayor to oversee the affairs of Karachi’s water utility as earlier this power had been vested in the Sindh government.
Ghani informed the House that as the local government minister he lacked the power to interfere in the working of the KWSC. He added that earlier, district municipal corporations (DMCs) had been empowered as per the local government law to carry out the waste disposal work in their respective jurisdictions.
He said the erstwhile DMC’s councils had earlier passed resolutions to authorise the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board to carry out disposal of solid waste within their jurisdiction. He clarified that the Sindh Local Government Act 2013 explained the powers and duties of all the municipal agencies in the province and those agencies were free to exercise these powers. He said the elected local government representatives had the requisite powers as defined in the Sindh Local Government Act.
NGOs
Meanwhile, the House was informed that the Sindh government’s social welfare department provided funds to bona fide non-governmental organisations (NGOs) after due verification of their services with the pre-requisite that these NGOs were registered with the provincial authorities for at least one year.
Sindh Social Welfare Minister Mir Tariq Talpur stated this while responding to oral and written queries during the question hour of the session. He said the social welfare department in the past year had registered 4,039 new NGOs. He added that registration had been granted to such NGOs, which had the footprint of field works in their respective domain.
Talpur disclosed that in 2017, the registration of some 7,000 NGOs had been rescinded as they had not been working in the field. Answering a question, the social welfare minister remarked that international NGOs, which had ample funds, merely conducted events in five-star hotels while local NGOs were found working on the ground. Answering another query, he told the lawmakers that the Sindh government would build a rehabilitation facility for drug addicts in the Korangi area of Karachi by 2025.