The Centre for Public Policy and Governance (CPPG) of the Forman Christian College, University held a consultation session with officers of the Local Government and Community Development (LGCD) Department on Tuesday.
Around 25 officers participated in the event. This event was part of the ‘Consultations and Research on Local Governance’ in the Punjab project, which is being held in collaboration with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
Recognising the gaps between implementation of laws, the officers were given a platform to share their experiences and empirical evidence that they had gathered over years of work in the field, along with their insights on PLGA 2013 implementation.
Shahid Zaman Lak, the Punjab Local Government additional secretary; Rainer Rohdewohld, GIZ’s team lead; and Dr Saeed Shafqat, the founding CPPG director; were present at the event.
Welcoming the officers of the department, Dr Shafqat pointed out the salient features of 2019 Act, as promoting grass roots democracy through direct elections, opening window of opportunity for political parties to contest at the local government and building synergy between the Punjab Local Government Act and the Punjab Village Panchayats and Neighbourhood Councils Act.
Dr Raja M Ali Saleem, associate professor), Dr Imdad Hussain, assistant professor, and Raheemul Haque, senior fellow, and Iqbal Haider Butt from Bargad moderated sessions on various aspects of PLGA 2019 implementation.
The consultations took place over two-days and had multiple objectives, including strengthening the capacity and skills of elected public officials and Local Government officials.
Besides processing lessons learnt from the PLGA 2013 implementation, they aimed for a more open and inclusive interaction between key stakeholders and for an increased acceptance of the PLGA 2019. There are going to be a total of three consultations as part of the project. The second consultation will be in August and will focus on ascertaining former local elected officials’ views on PLGA 2019. The final consultation will explore how coming up with better rules and regulations can enhance implementation of PLGA 2019.
