Upazila polls to be held soon: Anwarul Iqbal

---

Local Government and Rural Development Advisor M Anwarul Iqbal Thursday reaffirmed government position that upazila election would be held shortly, although major political parties are over-eager for national polls first, reports UNB.
"Upazila elections, we hope, will be held soon under the new ordinance and we all know that the Election Commission (EC) has been working on the matter," he told a workshop on 'Resource Mobilisation of Union Parishad' at a hotel in the city.
Local Government Division and UNDP jointly organised the workshop under a Local Government Support Project, funded by the UNDP, UNCDF and the European Commission (EC).
The LGRD Adviser said that the government had enacted some new ordinances for different local-government bodies and a new ordinance was under process for Zila Parishad, the highest local body.
In the ordinances, he said, some radical changes had been made to create scope for the sincere, honest, capable persons to be elected to local-government bodies.
Emphasising the strengthening of the financial capabilities of the local bodies, he said the government had already identified some steps to generate their own funds from local sources. "Even, the government is now contemplating that some portion of the value-added tax (VAT) and income tax will directly go to the coffers of the local-government bodies," he told the meet.
"More steps have to be identified so that local-government bodies do not need to be dependent on the central government's fund." Iqbal said an independent local-government commission is going to be constituted soon to address the issues related to local government.
The Local Government Division will not issue any directive or circular, formulate any rules and regulations without consulting the proposed commission.
He said in the new Upazila and Zila Parishad systems, women's empowerment issues were looked into, as two vice-chairmen posts had been created for each of the bodies. One vice-chairman would remain reserved for women candidates while women could contest another vice-chairman post as well.
The inaugural session of the workshop was also addressed by UNDP Resident Representative Renata Dessallien, head of Delegation of the EC Stefan Frowein and Secretary of Local Government Division Sheikh Khurshid Alam.