Last week, the people of Pakistan saw horrific images of Karachi drowning in unprecedented rains and urban floods. We saw roads turning into rivers, containers and cars flowing like logs in water, sewage entering houses, aeroplanes landing in foot deep water and what not. Life in Karachi came to a standstill and we still await official tally of loss of lives and property.

We saw an intense blame game on who is responsible among the local, provincial and federal governments but does this matter to the poor citizens who were the ultimate sufferers in this flood of apathy and incompetence?

Over the last six months or so, Pakistan successfully fought against the Covid pandemic and we have seen federal structures like National Command and Control Centre and National Disaster Management Authority taking front seat in our war against the pandemic, supported by provincial governments doing the actual implementation.

Similarly, the deadly locust attack is being dealt through coordination between federal and provincial governments. We also recently saw federal EHSAS/ BISP programme delivering cash transfers to millions of beneficiaries across the country. In all of these examples, we see the federal government backed by armed forces supporting the provincial governments in tackling the disasters. This is how it should be but does this mean that we should support federlisation of service delivery as opposed to more grassroots devolution?

Does this mean that devolution does not have a future in Pakistan? We need to answer the fundamental question whether Pakistan actually ever saw real devolution with political, fiscal and administrative decentralisation in the spirit of Article 140 A of the Constitution?

Pakistan has seen a wave of local government experiments in the last seventy years of its existence. After Ayub Khan’s basic democracies system, Gen Zia inaugurated the 1979 Local Government Ordinance which gave limited powers to local governments with main powers retained at the provincial level. This legislation remained in force till Gen Musharraf introduced his Local Government Ordinance in 2001 with substantial fiscal, administrative and political devolution to local governments.

The 2001 legislation remained in force till around 2012 when all provincial governments enacted new local government ordinances. Punjab, Balochistan and Sindh went back to a modified version of the 1979 legislations while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa came up with a modified version of 2001 local government legislation with comparatively more powers and authority to local governments.

The provincial governments are traditionally wary of an effective local government system as provincial and federal politicians have limited interest in sharing power with another set of stakeholders in the form of local politicians. The provincial and federal political stakeholders also want to keep a firm control on local development and service delivery issues to keep their personal voting base intact and, hence, any new stakeholder is not welcome.

This is the crux of why no provincial governments are interested in local government elections and strong local governments. Resultantly, all four provinces are without any representative local governments as of now and armed with explanations like Covid and court cases, it is difficult to know exact plans of provincial governments regarding next local government elections. Mostly it has been non-representative governments that advocated strong local governments as they sought to by-pass provincial political power base.

To understand the riddle around local governments in Pakistan, we need to briefly look at the example of 2001 law promulgated by the Musharraf government in all four provinces. The law established district governments with unprecedented political, administrative and financial authority. This made these district governments effective administrative units.

The office of deputy commissioner, which represented the provincial government, was abolished and in its place, the office of district coordination officer (DCO) was created. The DCO was the principal accounting officer of the district government and directly reported to the elected district nazim.

The district governments were given one-line budgets with substantial autonomy to the district nazims to use the money in the best interest of the people. In addition, a wide array of subjects ranging from finance, planning, health, education, agriculture and community development were brought under the ambit of district governments. Thus, district governments had not only been given the administrative control over these subjects but also the fiscal authority to plan and implement initiatives in these areas.

It was precisely this structure that made the local government system highly responsive to local needs. The system allowed Karachi mayors Niamat Ullah and Mustafa Kamal change the face of the city. A similar transformation was seen in Lahore, Multan, Khairpur and Faislabad with politicians like Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Mian Amir and Nafisa Shah vying for district nazim’s position rather than seats in provincial or national assemblies.

However, the system had a few political economy issues which slowly weakened the local government set-up and with waning power of Musharraf regime, it was slowly set to rest during 2007-2012.

A significant issue was the empowerment of a new breed of local politicians not welcomed by traditional political class. An equally significant issue was the resistance from the bureaucracy to being accountable to district level and sub-district politicians.

Once the first tenure of district and tehsil nazims was over, the provincial governments tried to run the local governments through DCOs and sub-district officers as administrators of local governments. Another significant complaint was corruption by district politicians as well as officials. However, there is not much evidence that the incidence of corruption changed significantly with the promulgation of the 2001 law.

Post 2012, provincial governments came up with various versions of local governments with varying degrees of authority and autonomy. Provincial governments wary of local governments, especially the opposition-led local governments, either paralysed them through resource cuts or plainly dissolved them; the aggrieved parties ended up in courts.

This time the disaster has exposed Karachi’s governance issues but that does not mean in any way that other cities and towns are safe from the same fate should a similar disaster strike.

There was even more chaos in cities like Karachi with multiple district jurisdictions, municipal committees, the DHAs and cantonments boards with limited capacity and coordination of organisations like water board, building control authority and solid waste management board. Add to this the electricity, law and order and traffic management issues and Karachi is a perfect example of how cities should not be run.

Karachi makes a horrific example of what happens when your local government structures do not work. Does anybody know who is responsible for clearance of Gujjar nullah from one end to the other? Who allows construction on storm-water drains and, more importantly, who stops such illegal constructions? How long and how far shall we continue to reclaim Karachi sea coast and why sewage is thrown into the sea right next to the Clifton beach?

Beyond the rainwater disaster, who is responsible for the uncontrolled urban slums, building safety regulations or waste disposal? We may have some answers but who is the one accountable authority or person? After seeing the horrifying images from the drowning Karachi, there is at least consensus about the need for drastic reforms to improve service delivery at the local level. This time the disaster has exposed Karachi governance issues but that does not mean in any way that other cities and towns are safe from a similar fate should God forbid a similar disaster strike. If there was ever a time to make a case for strengthening devolution, it is now.

While there is no silver bullet to resolve this highly political issue, there are certain reforms that can be undertaken within next few months to improve service delivery for the people through better local governments:

One, the federal government should be driving consensus-based devolution with similar features in all provinces. Local governments in the end are a provincial subject. Federal government can always facilitate largely uniform local government laws in all provinces.

Two, the new local government laws should ensure local governments get allocations from the Provincial Finance Commission (PFC) as clearly demarcated as these are at the National Finance Commission. PFC generally provide for formula-based resource allocations to local governments that are seldom adhered to in practice.

Three, it appears that keeping districts as the main local administrative unit in the first phase is the right approach especially in view of capacity constraints at sub-district levels. However, all the institutions can be further devolved at a later stage.

Fourth, the district, tehsil and other local body nazims should be directly elected from their constituencies so that they are not beholden to local elite in terms of decision making. This shall also strengthen party based politics at grassroots level as opposed to ethnic, baradari or patronage based politics.

Fifth, there should be a one-line budget allocation to all local governments and the nazims should have full financial authority with civil servants acting as principal accounting officers. Similarly, there should be a rule-based transparent mechanism for transfer of provincial development funds to local governments.

Sixth, all local service delivery organisations e.g. Karachi Water Board, Karachi Building Control Authority, Karachi Development Authority, Karachi Municipal Corporation etc should report directly to the mayor who should have complete authority over and responsibility for city.

Seventh, the district civil service as well as the police should report directly to the mayor or nazim as the case may be. The idea is to make head of local government chief executive of the jurisdiction with full authority and responsibility in a way similar to mayors of London and New York.

Eighth, the local governments should be given complete revenue collecting authority in their jurisdiction to collect local taxes and charges like property, water supply, waste collection, parking etc. The phenomenal increase in collection of provincial sales tax on services over the last few years is a clear example of how devolution of taxes may boost tax collection. There can always be an in-built mechanism to ensure equity between rich and poor local governments.

Ninth, there should be a district civil service and most of the local service delivery functions including education and health should be devolved over the next ten years. There is now considerable evidence that local oversight helps improve service delivery including education and health outcomes. This should also lead to improvement over time in performance issues as well as salary and pension bills facing federal and provincial governments.

Tenth, the new framework should ensure local elections after every four years and should cater for any delays on account of legal issues.

The disaster in Karachi provides us with an opportunity to resolve the local governance conundrum, one of the most significant governance challenges facing Pakistan, once and for all. These reforms would not be easy but this is indeed a cause worth fighting for.

The writer is a development professional with focus on governance and public policy. He can be contacted at omarmukhtar16@gmail.com