NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani has said that his government is not against the district government system "rather we wanted to remove the lacuna and complications in the system putting in place a check and balance mechanism and accountability because without checks and balances and absence of responsibility, no system can be a perfect one."
He said that power and authority carried the element of responsibility and "we should not ignore it."
He was presiding over a meeting regarding local government system at the Frontier's House, Peshawar. Chief Secretary Ejaz Ahmad Qureshi and others attended.
The meeting tabled a number of suggestions and shaped various recommendations in this regard.
The chief minister said: "For the nourishment of district government system, we need to go for its fine-tuning and removing weaknesses in the system." He said that presently the district government system was incomplete. The provincial government had devolved all the powers to the grass roots level but power and authority from the Centre to the province were yet to be devolved. There was no need for a concurrent list.
"We wanted to create consensus on issues relating to the district government system in order to make it acceptable to all the elected representatives.
Durrani said that all the four chief ministers would sit together and arrive at a conclusion as to how to run the district government system, and make it effective for improved social services delivery system.
He regretted that some of the districts had not yet passed their budgets. "In such a grim scenario what can the people expect of the district governments to deliver as far as developmental activities are concerned."
Durrani said that under the provincial finance award, resources had been given to districts but there were tug of war between the elected representatives and district governments. "We want to determine the role of all to make this system run effectively," he said.