Pakistan

Introduction

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a federal state situated in South East Asia to the northwest of the Indian subcontinent and bordered by India to the east and south-east, China to the north-east, Afghanistan to the north and north-west, Iran to the west, and the Arabian Sea to the south. It has a land area of 796,095 sq km and a population of 164,741,924.

The four provinces of Pakistan have three levels of local government: district (zila), tehsil, and union. There are 110 districts and 394 tehsils and 6,125 unions in the four provinces. Special provision has been made for the four provincial capital cities, each of which has a city district, with the tehsil level represented by 33 towns. In June 2005 before the election for the second term of local goverment, Rawalpindi, Faisaladabad, Gujranwala and Multan were declared as city districts by the government of Punjab.

The capital city is Islamabad and the official languages are Urdu and English.

Summary

Since the enactment of the 2001 provincial Local Government Ordinances, Pakistan has embarked on a radical restructuring of its sub-provincial government system. The devolution plan ‘follows the principle of subsidiarity, whereby all functions which can be effectively performed at local level are transferred to that level’.

Download full profile of Pakistan ( 126K PDF)