Most of time country has been sans local governments, says Mian Amer

Punjab Group of Colleges Chairman Mian Amer Mehmood said on Thursday that despite the fact that a local government had a great importance in improving governance in a country, unfortunately there had been few periods during which Pakistan had local governments, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.

Addressing a seminar at the University of Central Punjab (UCP) in Lahore, he said that the purpose of the creation of a country was to ensure the welfare of its inhabitants. “And a government is required to run the affairs of a country,” he said, adding, “Out of a total of four provinces of our country, it is difficult to govern two of them.”

He said it was extremely unfortunate that millions of people in the country had stunted growth. “Another worrying point is that over 25 million children are not enrolled in schools,” he added.

Amir further said that the government must learn from the fact that there is a tendency in India to make new provinces. “By making new provinces, per capita income and the GDP of each state in our neighbouring country has increased,” he informed.

Similarly, he went on to say, there was a room for several provinces in Punjab. “It is better to upgrade each division to a new province. Hence we will have 33 provinces,” he suggested.

He was of the view that similarly new provinces could be carved out of Sindh, KP and Balochistan. “Look India has 38 states, while China has 31 provinces. We, on the contrary, have only four.”

He lamented that another shortcoming was that there was a dearth of leadership in the country. “There has hardly been any prime minister in the country’s recent history who reached the corridors of power merely on the basis of a popular vote,” he said, adding, “All prime ministers sneaked into the corridors of power without delivering at the local government level and did not enjoy the support of a bulk of the population.”