LAHORE: Some 6,000 staffers of the defunct union councils (UCs) have once more taken over the registration document of births, deaths, marriages, divorces and verification from the octroi clerks, naib qasids (peons) posted there since lengthy.
The choice, in keeping with an official report, to put up the UCs staffers in 2,600 area places of work (beforehand UC places of work) throughout Punjab was taken after the division handed over the executive management of area places of work to its Directorate General of Local Government below the Punjab Local Government Registration of Births and Deaths Rules 2021 of May 31 — made within the gentle of Punjab Local Government Act, 2019, whereby administrative management of registration places of work and the civil registration of important statistics (CRVS) was entrusted to the Local Government DG and its area officers.
The report states that the deficiency of skilled and certified workers within the area places of work has been lined by posting some 6,000 defunct UCs officials who had been receiving salaries with out work because the abolition of the UCs over a 12 months again.
The CRVS has been the mandate of the Local Government & Community Department (LG&CD) in Punjab, like different components of the nation, because the Sixties when the primary native authorities system was launched.
The report mentions that the UCs, the grassroots tier of native governments, has been a main establishment for registration of important occasions each in city and rural areas below the PLGO 1979, the PLGO 2001 and the PLGA 2013, and the workers appointed within the UCs was recruited and skilled especifically for the registration of important occasions.
The report remembers that below the PLGO 2001, TMAs (tehsil municipal administrations) had been established and the staffers (octroi/chungi clerks and many others) posted within the abolished zila councils, municipal firms (MCs) and municipal committees, had been appointed as union council (UCs) secretaries.
For being untrained, the report says, these officials badly affected the working of the UCs and the registration of important occasions. Therefore, the division repatriated them again to their dad or mum native governments, revived below PLGA 2013.
However, the repatriated workers refused to return and remained within the UCs on the idea of court docket keep orders until the Lahore High Court in its April 24, 2020 verdict vacated these keep orders.
It says that below the brand new system (launched below PLGA 2019), sadly, the cardinal establishment of UCs, having particular operate of registration, was not retained in its authentic kind and the Village Panchayats (VPs) and Neighborhood Councils (NCs) had been handled because the grassroots tier of the native our bodies, although these weren’t declared full-fledged native governments, below the Punjab Village Panchayat and Neighbourhood Councils Act of 2019.
The operate of the registration was assigned to the higher tier of native governments (MCs, ZCs ), as an alternative of VPs and NCs, in keeping with Schedules 3, 4, and 5 of authentic PLGA 2019.
The report says the mess began when the part 3(2) and 15 of the PLGA, 2019 had been misinterpreted/misinterpret and the UCs had been succeeded by native governments within the higher-tier (MCs, LCs), as an alternative of VPs & NCs, being the grassroots tier on November 8, 2019.
Moreover, the higher tier of native governments was dissolved and succeeding native governments had been established. However, VPs and NCs couldn’t be constituted and UCs had been allowed to proceed with registration work.
However, the state of affairs aggravated when the division, in April 2020, stopped UCs from offering registration providers with out constituting the succeeding grassroots tier. “So the certified and skilled workers for CRVS of defunct UCs was left with no official duties and was taking salaries from the federal government exchequer with none official task since May 1 final,” the report reveals.
“The skilled workers has taken over most of area places of work/UCs and began performing the job of important statistics registration. But the issue nonetheless persists within the districts of Jhang and Layyah the place the earlier workers is but to handover the CRVS document to us. But this situation might be resolved quickly,” Local Government & Community Development Department Director General Ms Kausar Khan instructed Dawn.
Published in Dawn, June twenty first, 2021
