KARACHI: Mayor Karachi Waseem Akhtar is still powerless despite attending his office for the last five days, officials of Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) said on Wednesday. In his place, Deputy Mayor Arshad Vohra and Dr Badar Jamil are still the signing authorities on all financial bills, administrative expenditures and even approved transfers and postings of KMC officials. Khalid Mehmood Shaikh, Finance Adviser KMC told Daily Times that, “Until the powers are assigned to the Mayor, it is against the laws of the entity that the Deputy Mayor or Municipal Commissioner (MC) may use Mayor’s power in financial and administrative matters. MC who also acts and officiates as Principal Officer and Chief Accountant officer was informed that he should seize to sign financial bills, administrative documents and other related matters which are the powers of the Mayor”, said Khalid Mehmood. The other reason in the delay of transfer of powers is described as that the City Council (CC)’s meeting was not held to delegate powers to the Mayor as under SLGO Act 2013, that’s why CC is currently enjoying all these powers. KMC bureaucracy is also nervous on this matter as they think that in case of any error by Deputy Mayor or MC in official matters, they would also be held equally responsible. Deputy Mayor and Sindh Government has also developed a conflict over the matter of transfer and posting of 13 KMC officers while the Local Government (LG) has also asked MC to withdraw these transfer and posting. “CC is the authority to delegate powers to Mayor and Deputy Mayor and in absence of these two, no other official can use the powers of transfer and posting”, was written in an LG letter to the KMC. In the absence of the Mayor, Sindh Government is still controlling different departments of KMC and all the development work.