House committee discusses decentralisation law

AMMAN — The Joint Parliamentary Committee (the Legal Administrative Committee), on Sunday began discussing the draft municipalities and decentralisation law of 2021, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

MP Mohammad Hilalat, who headed the meeting which was attended by Deputy Prime Minister and Local Administration Minister Tawfiq Krishan, said that the draft law comes to implement the Royal vision of achieving administrative reform and activating the role of the public in decision making.

For his part, Minister Krishan explained that one of the reasons for withdrawing the previous bill from the Lower House was due to the existence of a conflict of jurisdiction between the municipalities and the governorate councils representing decentralisation.

Such a conflict prevents the delivery of services to people and leads to failure to achieve development, he said. He also highlighted the presence of many overlaps between the municipal and governorate councils. 

The minister said the new draft law is based on cooperation and integration between municipalities and provincial councils.

Krishan pointed out that the draft law included the mayors of municipalities and representatives of the Chambers of Industry and Commerce and the Farmers Union within the governorate councils, in addition to the directly elected members of the governorate councils.

He added that governorate councils do not have a service role, but rather a developmental role to provide job opportunities and combat unemployment, noting that the draft law included the allocation of 40 per cent of a governorate’s budget for development projects.

He said that when the law is passed, an executive system will be announced, and then the election date will be set.

Members of the committee and attending deputies presented a number of observations and proposals on the draft law, most notably the separation between the Municipalities Law and the Decentralisation Law to enhance the independence of municipal and governorate councils.