Civil service
reform
Prime Minister (PM)
Imran Khan made a pitch to the civil servants on September 14, 2018 regarding
support for his reforms agenda, promising in the process a massive turnaround
in their lives and the country within two years. In return, he promised them
dignity and respect by eliminating their humiliation at the hands of the
National Accountability Bureau (NAB), higher pay and incentives to scotch the
temptation of corruption, merit in promotions, protection of tenure and last
but not least, depoliticisation of the bureaucracy. A tall order by any measure
or reckoning, the PM’s appeal is a recognition of the role of the executive arm
as the implementer of policy and the institution responsible for the day-to-day-running
of the state’s affairs. However, in the next breath Imran Khan lamented the
fact that the country was in dire straits financially, lacking money to run the
government and victim of a classic debt trap in which fresh loans are required
just to service the previous loans and in which the debt mountain increases
over time, as has been witnessed in Pakistan’s debt trajectory over the years.
The PM held out the assurance that civil servants acting in good faith who made
honest mistakes would not be penalised; they would in fact receive protection
and support from the government. This is a tacit admission of human
fallibility, with the real protection to civil servants provided by adherence
to rules and procedures that are above questioning from any quarter. The PM
also admitted that quick postings and transfers were most disruptive of the
work of governments. Promising an ‘out of the box’ approach to Pakistan’s
problems, Imran Khan argued that a change in the lavish colonial lifestyle of
the elite and bureaucracy would rid the country of debt (a thesis that is
questionable at the altar of the harsh economic facts on the ground). Imran Khan
exhorted his audience of select senior civil servants to consider before
spending any money the majority of young people in the country looking for
employment, the millions of out-of-school children, the tragedy of millions of undernourished
children, the high rate of mortality amongst women in childbirth and infant
deaths due to waterborne diseases. Dilating on the issue of depoliticisation,
the PM promised that civil servants’ political affiliations or likes and
dislikes would not stand in the way and their performance would be the only
criterion on which they would be judged.
While the PM’s
ideas reflect a humanitarian approach to the country’s social and health
problems and a professional approach to the bureaucracy charged with
implementing the government’s policies, there are a number of aspects of his
speech that bear comment. First and foremost, the PM’s ‘promise’ of a Singapore
model in which the bureaucrats’ pay would be so high that corruption would not enter
their minds misses a very important component of the model he admires. This is the
ethical dimension without which all the gold in the world cannot persuade a
person in a position of power or influence to forego the potential advantages
accruing to such office. And in any case, according to his own admission, the
PM cannot promise this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for at least two
years. So in essence he is asking the bureaucracy to support the government
through their efforts for at least two years, after which they will be richly
rewarded. To many civil servants informed about the state of affairs of the
country, this may sound like pie in the sky. Second, two Deputy Commissioners
in Punjab have been served with notices under the removal of service law for
complaining of political interference by PTI parliamentarians in the matter of
postings and transfers of lower grade officers under their purview. This
development hardly encourages civil servants to abide by the rules and law, a
practice long since extinct because of precisely the politicians’ penchant for
such antics when in power since it serves their patronage networks on which
their success in parliamentary politics relies. Third, vacant posts in the
federal government and its autonomous or semi-autonomous bodies alone number
170,000. This backlog has accumulated it is reported because of the previous
government’s restrictions on recruitment. In addition, the quotas assigned to
the provinces under Article 72, which expired in 2013, were sought to be
extended by the previous government for another 20 years and a bill was moved
to this effect in parliament but could not be adopted. So the current quota
regime relies on a cabinet decision to continue the quota as laid down in
Article 72 without constitutional cover. Not only that, the relative shares of
the provinces seem tilted in practice in favour of Punjab and Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa and against Sindh and Balochistan, a cause for much gnashing of
teeth in the latter two provinces. Last but not least, the pet theme of the PTI
and Imran Khan, i.e. corruption, needs to be placed in historical context to
understand how quickly after independence the rot set in, starting with false evacuee
property claims and escalating thereafter to the present arguably endemic
proportions. There is also the current fearful atmosphere amongst civil servants
to be dealt with. Some top bureaucrats have been hauled up by NAB ostensibly on
corruption charges but in the eyes of many because they were considered too
close for comfort to the previous government. Civil servants must be provided
an environment in which they can function without fear or favour otherwise the
government machinery may well grind to a halt, if it has not already. And the
officers of the bureaucracy also need to change their attitudes to the citizen
from treating the common man as a colonial servant of the state to a citizen
empowered by all the rights provided in the Constitution. PM Imran Khan’s
speech may not be sufficient to achieve the difficult targets he has outlined.
One can only wish the government good luck in this endeavor.
No comments:
Post a Comment