Provincial councils not doing job well: IDLG

JALALABAD (PAN): An official of the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG) on Tuesday complained provincial councils were not performing their job up to the mark.

Saeed Ahmad Khamosh, who heads the IDLG’s solidarity committee, told this to a two a day-conference that began in Jalalabad, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province, bringing together provincial council members from eight provinces in the country’s east and southeastern zone zones.

Khamosh said provincial council members from four eastern provinces — Nangarhar, Kunar, Laghman and Nuristan and southeastern provinces — Paktia, Paktika, Khost and Ghazni — would give information to participants of the two-day conference about their past activities and share their problems with the authorities concerned.

He said the conference would provide the public representatives with an opportunity to share their experiences. “The public representatives in most provinces do not come to their job and they are busy doing something else,” Khamosh said.

He also said a new law had been drafted for the provincial councils to identify more areas, where the public representatives might be required to oversee.

Under the law, he said council members had to submit their reports about departments they monitored to the central authority.

Nangarhar provincial council secretary Lal Mohammad Durrani told the conference residents of the eastern province faced many problems, which needed government’s attention to be resolved.

He said many key projects, including the construction of second Behsud Bridge, second Torkham-Jalalabad highway, the distribution of electricity connections and the industrial park, were yet to be completed.

“We have time and again shared our problems with the government and the masses know how much it has resolved,” he said.

A Nuristan council member Amanullah Inayatur Rahman said the major problem in his province was insecurity that restricted the public representatives from monitoring government departments and projects.

Ghazni council head Amanullah Karam said the new IDLG-drafted law would enable public representatives to openly monitor the affairs of provincial government departments.

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