RECORDER REPORT

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government has shown great potential in legislative and policy development (e.g. enactment of KP Right to Information (RTI) Act 2013, KP Right to Public Services (RPS) Act, 2014, and KP Local Government Act 2013. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Act 2013 is considered most effective in terms of meaningfully devolving the powers and resources to the local level. Dismissal of Provincial Ministers on charges of corruption and inefficiency in KP was an unprecedented action.

This was analyzed by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat) in its report on “Assessment of the Quality of Governance in Pakistan” for the year 2014-15.

The Joint Director of Pildat Aasiya Riaz formally presented the report to Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pervez Khattak at CM House Thursday and apprised him of the methodology adopted and parameters set for as well as findings of the assessment. Chief Secretary Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Amjad Ali Khan, ACS, Dr. Hamad Agha and Principal Secretary to the CM, Dr. Shahzad Bangash were also present.

A 27-member Governance Assessment Group of Pildat was assigned to eveluiate the quality of governance in the federal and four provincial governments for the year June 2013-May 2014.

The group carried out the evaluation on the basis of data collected from the governments, publicly available documents, media and public opinion polls. She told that in KP, the findings and score of the public opinion poll was exactly matching with the data provided by the provincial government while in other provinces results of the score card were found quite different.

She also identified several sectors of KP government, which need further improvement adding that it was found that KP governance was system-oriented instead of persons specific and common people acknowledge the performance of the provincial government.

Chief Minister Pervez Khattak informed that legislation and policy making for reforming the system to ensure good governance was top priority of the PTI-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa coalition government and we achieved the goal by our firm commitment during the first year of the provincial government as people voted the PTI to power for changing the system to secure their rights and justice, he added.

He said that all reforms and legislation as well as other governance measures were carried out on recommendations of experts from the public, private and NGO sectors who gave their precious input under different working groups formed for this purpose.

He told that RTI and RPS was enacted to ensure transparency and efficient service delivery in the government departments and institutions while the Whistle Blower Law and Conflict of Interest Law were in the offing which would provide incentives to common people for identifying those involved in corruption and stealing of the public properties and smuggling.

He said that creation of an independent Ehtesab (Accountability) Commission was a novel idea of the KP government as the PTI has no trust in NAB because its head remains loyal to the Prime Minister and opposition leader who nominated him.

The Chief Secretary on this occasion regretted that PILDAT had wrongly reported 2014-15 ADP spending fugues of KP in its another report clarifying that during the previous year this spending was 93 percent. He said that ADP spending had never been below 80 percent in this province which was even higher than Punjab province which could spend hardly 78percent last year.