Briefing media after the approval of the proposal by the Cabinet and implementation commission meetings headed by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and attended by Chief Ministers, chairman of implementation committee, Senator Raza Rabbani described the day historic as it marked a big administrative decision for making provinces more powerful and autonomous by handing over five ministries to the federating units as guaranteed in 1973 Constitution.
The five ministries devolved to the provinces in the first phase are Ministry of Special Initiative, Ministry of Zakat and Ushr, Ministry of Population Welfare, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development along with office buildings, equipment and development funds and projects for fiscal year 2010-11.
Raza Rabbani said that all the issues pertaining to international matters of these ministries would be transferred to Economic Affairs Division (EAD) and some related to planning to the Planning and Development Division. He clarified that overall planning of the ministries being transferred or to be transferred in February 2011 would be responsibility of the provincial governments. In reply to a question about the employees working in the ministries, he said no one would be retrenched, laid off from service or would be offered golden handshake, instead legislation would be done in co-ordination with the provinces to protect their services. Secretary Establishment Division, Ismail Qureshi stated that there are 3769 federal government employees in the devolved ministries including 2671 permanent and 951 working on contractual basis. He said some of them are already working in the attached departments of these ministries in the provinces and remaining would go into the surplus pool for the time being and would be adjusted later.
Rabbani said all of them would be adjusted. He said the Cabinet also approved rules of business for devolution of these ministries and notification in this regard would be issued by today or tomorrow. Raza Rabbani stated that prior to the Cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister chaired the meeting of the implementation commission that was attended by all the four provincial chief ministers and unanimously approved the proposal that was later endorsed by the Cabinet.
Minister for information Qamar Zaman Kaira, Minister for Housing Rahmatullah Kakar, Minister for Overseas Pakistanis Farooq Sattar and Senator Ishaq Dar were also present during the briefing. The Information Minister said that the Cabinet also ratified Afghan Transit Trade Agreement (ATTA) with Afghanistan. However, he did not respond to questions about the shocking revelation of WikiLeaks and Reformed GST and requested the media to restrict themselves to the Cabinet decision.
Earlier, the Prime Minister presided over the meeting of the implementation commission on constitutional reforms and Rabbani told the meeting that during the first phase, five ministries will be devolved while the second phase of devolution will be completed by the first week of February 2011 and the remaining ministries will be devolved by June, 30, 2011.