Some CSS aspirants from Faisalabad had bribed the postal staff to make changes to the answer sheets of the exam as they were being couriered to the FPSC head office.

The aspirants involved could not be identified but thankfully the scheme was foiled. But even if their plan had worked they would have achieved at best a government job in BPS 17, which pays so little that I am sure the amount they paid in the bribe would not be covered for the next five years at least.

All in all, these individuals need to learn from the flawless plan of the lot mentioned in the following paragraphs.

Among his last official activities, the former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf approved a summary pertaining to the induction of 284 people from corporations, autonomous bodies and provincial departments to the Office Management Group (OMG) of the Federal Civil Service, a group meant to be filled primarily by candidates who are selected by the FPSC via the CSS exam.

This direct induction means that the appointees will bypass all exams and recruitment procedures, land permanent jobs in the federal government and make a mockery out of merit.

The summary for their induction was moved on March 16, 2013 and approved on March 18, 2013. What prompted such quick action was the fact that the beneficiaries were apparently handpicked for being close to the political class which seems to have taken Otto von Bismarck’s words, “politics is the art of the possible”, a bit too literally.

Out of these 284 people, 130 would be inducted in BPS 18, a level which someone selected on merit after passing the CSS exam with flying colours achieves after at least five years of service. This means that these 130 persons would always stay ahead of those inducted on merit — seniority is the most important criterion for promotion to the next grade.

The move was attributed to the shortage of 200 odd section officers in the Federal Secretariat owing to two periods of decade-long gaps in recruitment to the OMG via the CSS exam. This shortage would have been plugged to some extent when 41 officers selected on merit by the FPSC and currently under training joined the ranks.

The remaining 160 positions could easily have been filled in two years at the most by selecting candidates on merit through the CSS exam. The heavens would not have fallen if regular recruitments were made in this time period for the sake of upholding merit.

However, if the shortage of officers demands that positions be filled with immediate effect, the rules allow officers from other service groups of CSS cadre like the railways, commerce and trade, postal services, etc to be posted on deputation thus ensuring meritocracy.

Compromising on merit for plugging shortages is a mindless move. But we suppose that for the politicians, compromising on merit for the sake of securing votes or favouring cronies is very wise.

So much so that the tale of the tortoise and the hare is currently playing itself out between two class fellows. One of them passed the CSS exam, the other failed it thrice — the maximum number of times a candidate can take the exam. The one who passed is still serving in BPS 17 and the one who failed is now waiting to be inducted in BPS 18 in the same group.

Moral of the story: one should never lose hope in politicians.

Now that the political government has completed its term will all these wrongs be undone? I believe the answer is in the negative. We have seen enough of such anomalies being brushed under the carpet.

One can drive around flouting the law in non-custom-paid luxury vehicles for years while those with respect for the law spend their hard-earned money on cars that are not even safe, let alone luxurious. Then one fine morning an amnesty scheme is announced endorsing the actions of those who broke the law.

Accountability laws appear to come with a cutoff date and those who embezzle public money before that date are allowed to walk away unquestioned — so the earlier you start the better.

This example applies to these irregular inductions to the civil service; even if the next government expels the usurpers from service by which time they have already accrued considerable advances. The government after that restores them with all the perks and wages paid in arrears.

Evidence suggests the man behind this move was a former minister for religious affairs.

The bottom line is that the rule of law and respect for the law are a distant dream in a system where the unlawful becomes lawful in a matter of minutes.

The writer is a civil servant.

syedsaadatwrites@gmail.com

Had it not been for her, I would have not been able to write this; and had it not been for many like her, no reader would have been able to read this. After a career spanning well over three decades, my former teacher retired early last year in BPS 20 from her position as the principal of a college run in the federal capital by the federal government.

It would be no exaggeration to say that if ever anybody truly deserved the emoluments the government bestows on its employees on retirement, it would be her.

However, more than a year has passed but she is still waiting for her retirement benefits. This may be unfortunate, but it’s definitely not unexpected, for hers is not the only case that has been mishandled. The woes of pensioners, if they do not happen to be from the privileged class — which sadly does not include teachers — know no limits in Pakistan.

It is convenient to criticise the bureaucratic elite for slack systems and the media often takes that route. Yet a closer look reveals that the problem does not essentially lie with people higher up the bureaucratic hierarchy; it lies in the lower ranks. Employee unions and the trend of taking away bureaucrats’ discretionary powers have resulted in “look busy, do nothing” governance.

In most departments, a junior to middle-level officer is nothing more than a paper tiger. The maximum action that an officer can take against indiscipline on part of the lowest-ranked government employee is issue a warning or conduct a fruitless inquiry. Resultantly, even pragmatic officers lose motivation and a sense of ownership of their duties over time.

The department that deals with pensions and retirement benefits is section G8 of the Accountant General Pakistan Revenues (AGPR). The section is run by clerks under the supervision of officers that are helpless at the hands of the clever tactics by these clerks. They entwine officers and stakeholders in such a web of procedures and forms that getting a just claim through becomes a hugely arduous task.

The teacher to whom I am referring is a very meticulous individual, which is why the application she submitted to the AGPR was so thorough that even the staff at the AGPR could not come up with any objections — despite their best efforts. Therefore, she was told to come in a fortnight to get her claim.

A couple of weeks later, she was told to her utter surprise that no progress had been made in her case as the file that contained her documents had been lost and couldn’t be found. Such was the audacity of the clerk in charge that he told her rather disrespectfully that if she wanted to get her case processed, she must get duplicate copies of all the documents and submit them again.

Going from one office to another and getting duplicate copies of decades’ old records is an uphill task for even a young man, let alone a 61-year-old woman. Gutsy as my teacher is, she did even that and provided the department with the relevant file. After a few more rounds of objections and rejections the new dossier of documents was accepted.

To cut a long story short, it has now been 15 months since her retirement but she has neither received her pension nor a penny from her retirement benefits. More unfortunate is the fact that she is not an exception; this is the plight of a large number of pensioners who refuse to grease palms or pull strings.

Lastly, something that made me feel very uncivilised and selfish, and prompted me to write on the issue: her reply when I advised her to meet a very senior officer in AGPR who I know personally to get her case processed. She said, “Thanks for your help but I do not want selective justice. Also, I don’t think he would be able to do anything as most of these men are clueless about their duties.”

Then, she left me speechless by quoting the following verses from the poet Daagh, very apt considering her rich taste in literature (having taught the subject for decades), and befitting of the attitudes of our public servants: “Jin ko apni khabar nahin ab tak, Woh meray dil ka raaz kya janein; Jo guzartay hain Dagh per sadmay, Woh yeh banda nawaz kya janein.” (Those who are clueless about even their own self would obviously be oblivious to my secrets. Privileged as they are, they would obviously be oblivious of my sufferings.) Perhaps, in the end, it is relevant to mention that AGPR employees were on strike until an audit and accounts allowance at 20 per cent of basic pay with effect from March 1, 2013, was announced by the prime minister recently. Given inflation, this increase was justified; but I hope for a time when public servants will start taking performance as seriously as they take perks.

The writer is a civil servant.

syedsaadatwrites@gmail.com

Horse-riding continues to be part of the training of the officers of the Pakistan Administrative Service, the erstwhile District Management Group, even today. Since horse-riding instils self-confidence and improves physical fitness one can argue that this is something which still has at least some farfetched purpose, unlike the countless practices and policies of our civil services that continue to prevail despite having no purpose at all.

It would not go down very well with many of my juniors, seniors and peers, if I say that the ‘elite’ civil service of Pakistan is in fact the ‘obsolete’ civil service of Pakistan.
The morale of the aspirants taking the Central Superior Service (CSS) exam, the gateway to the ‘elite’ civil service of Pakistan, will be badly hit as well and they might end up blaming me for their subsequent failure.

Whatever the reaction, it would not change the fact that from pay scales to promotion criterion, office buildings to office environment, the superiority complex of seniors to the sycophancy of juniors, every single facet of the elite civil service of Pakistan is obsolete.

On a recent trip to Singapore I had the privilege to shadow a young but senior Singaporean bureaucrat. Chee Seng is on a three-year secondment as executive vice-president with a big oil company and will rejoin the government-run Energy Market Authority of Singapore on completion of the period.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Chee Seng invited me to a dinner along with some of his colleagues. The lady sitting on my right having graduated from the London School of Economics on a state scholarship was working in the Ministry of Finance and the young gentleman on my left had graduated from Stanford University and was serving in the Ministry of Trade and Industry. While waiting for dinner to be served, I could not resist the temptation of asking the question that had been rearing its head since the start of my interaction with Chee Seng and his very qualified colleagues. What on earth were they doing in the government sector with such profiles and talent? They were unanimous in stating that it was the place where their talents were put to the greatest use and where they were most appropriately rewarded.

The Singapore civil service is one of the most efficient and least corrupt in the world with some of the highest paid civil servants. This high-wage structure was introduced in the early to mid-1990s and civil service salaries are pegged to those of the private sector.

The Singapore government introduced civil service reforms in the 1990s and a couple of decades down the road these have proven their effectiveness. Public Service for the 21st Century (PS21) was the flagship reform programme. It met two objectives and these are also what we need most to make our obsolete civil service more goal-oriented.

Firstly, civil servants must be motivated into nurturing an attitude of service excellence in meeting the needs of the public with high standards of quality, courtesy and responsiveness. This can be achieved by better perks, ruthless performance audit and breaking the “iron rice bowl” (translation of a Chinese term used to refer to an occupation with guaranteed steady income and benefits).

Office files moving from the desk of one babu to another must be taken over by emails and record registers should be taken over by servers and databases. Many might find it hard to believe that even in this day and age, a single police station anywhere in Pakistan maintains as many as 27 registers related to documentation and still we ask the reason for our police being unable to tackle crime.

Singaporean mandarins are actually very young when compared to Pakistani civil servants who are at a similar level in the hierarchy. Peter Ong, who heads Singapore’s civil service, is 50 years old and has been in senior positions (equivalent to that of a grade 22 secretary in Pakistan) since 2002 when he was merely 40.

On the contrary, in Pakistan a recent change in the promotion criterion of civil servants ensures that an officer must have completed at least three years in BPS 20 to qualify for promotion to BPS 21. To be honest, this would serve no purpose except for blunting the talents of our bureaucrats even further.

Secondly, the Singapore civil service is not closed to hiring talented individuals from outside the service structure. In fact, unlike the case in Pakistan, this practice is not despised by the bureaucrats. Pakistani bureaucrats despise technocrats because the appointment of a technocrat to a bureaucratic position means that the babus are left without their share in the big game.

In Singapore civil service the line differentiating technocrats from bureaucrats has been smudged by transforming bureaucrats into technocrats by providing them with training opportunities and keeping them motivated by a just system of reward and appreciation.

Lastly, as someone once said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. Need I say more?

The writer is a civil servant.

syedsaadatwrites@gmail.com

There are a few pertinent reasons behind the happy faces, one of them being the Supreme Court judgment of Nov 12 on the petition filed by a civil servant, Anita Turab, for protection of civil servants. The judgment by the apex court emphasises security of tenure for civil servants, better measures to cease victimisation, so on and so forth.

The judgment, authored by Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja, goes to the extent of stating that “Civil servants owe their first and foremost allegiance to the law and the constitution. They are not bound to obey orders from superiors which are illegal or are not in accordance with accepted practices and rule-based norms.”

Then there is a more individualistic reason for the happy faces: 33 officers got promoted to grade 22 recently. Most of them are over the moon except for a few who feel getting so high up at this age might be detrimental to their health.

Being an optimist myself I would have preferred the company of the happier among the lot. But as fate would have it I bumped into someone who was not all that upbeat. One obvious reason behind the grumpy mood might be his impending superannuation. But the rest of the reasons were very thought-provoking and somewhat alarming.

“Do you know what and how I feel about this promotion?” he asked, as if insinuating that I should have taken the initiative to ask the question myself. Without waiting for my response he continued: “You must have seen an ox which goes around in circles to run the mechanical contraptions used for drawing water from a well or crushing sugar cane.

“That ox is blindfolded to ensure it keeps going without being distracted. I feel like that ox who was actually going around in circles but the blindfold made it believe that it was passing through exotic landscapes and travelling to some wonderland. But when they take the blindfold off its eyes it realises that it is standing at the same place where it was when it all started. The SC judgment, this promotion and impending retirement has felt like somebody has taken away the blindfold.”

“Wow,” I said to myself at the relevance of the analogy the classy bureaucrat drew and the essence of the conversation that followed.

Along with the recent approval of promotion of 33 civil servants to grade 22, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf has also approved comprehensive guidelines for streamlining the civil service in light of the Nov 12 judgment. Remarkable as it may seem, this is nothing different from the dozens of rules, guidelines, regulations and codes already present in the system, some of them as old as the first official activity of the East India Company in the subcontinent.

What we need now is not yet another guideline but reforms in the civil service which are surgical, objective and minimise the arbitrariness which has smeared the face of this institution.

The world has moved to standards measurable to decimal points in every field including sports, scientific research, university admission tests and even processing of immigration visas. Most readers must be aware of the scoring system used by Canadian or Australian immigration authorities.

Political influence simply cannot be exerted if laid-down rules for posting against a particular post are objective and measurable. For example, for a civil servant to be appointed as DCO Lahore, a degree in town management/law, a minimum of 10 years’ experience as town administrator, previous membership of a team which has completed a couple of development projects each worth at least Rs500m, service in at least two provinces of the country etc can be the prerequisites to be considered.

Similarly, if an ambassador to China has to be appointed then a degree in International Relations, fluency in Chinese language, a minimum of 15 years of diplomatic experience of which five should be in China can be the benchmark. The Inland Revenue Service, Pakistan Customs Service, Pakistan Post and Pakistan Railways can have exceeding revenue targets by 10 per cent in the last posting as a requirement for appointment to a more pivotal position.

What the Supreme Court’s decision or guidelines approved by the prime minister want to achieve can only be realised by formulating and implementing such standards.

We do not need to reinvent the wheel; what is needed is a will to put the wheel on the right track. Guidelines similar to the ones that have been present for decades would not serve the purpose. Keeping a check on undue pressures and undesirable influences on civil servants would seamlessly become part of the system when reform is directed towards inducing change through modern management techniques and tools.

An acceptance of change — that too not of a specific, final stage but an acceptance of the need for change as a permanent state — is a must.

Lastly, a comment by the senior bureaucrat whose self-critical appraisal inspired this article, about the dilemma our bureaucracy faces today: “Taking the blindfold off is not enough. You’ve got to make them see the goal as well, otherwise they will keep going around in circles.”

The writer is a civil servant.

syedsaadatwrites@gmail.com

Had he been a civil servant he would have written “And I took the less risky one”, instead of “less travelled by”, because risk-aversion comes naturally to civil servants, just like poetry did to Robert Frost.

Risk-aversion is a tendency among civil servants to avoid situations that can put them in direct conflict with the power brokers — be they politicians, the military bureaucracy or their seniors. It is a global phenomenon. However, this aversion is accentuated in developing countries like Pakistan as situations requiring a response arise more often. Delayed decision-making, ambiguous rulings, conflicting orders nullifying each other, etc. are all forms of risk-aversion among civil servants.

The poor bureaucrat cannot be blamed for such an attitude as daring decision-making does not come naturally to a middle-class man who toils hard for years, first in the attempt to enter the proverbial ‘permanent’ government service and later at the lower levels of bureaucratic hierarchy. So, when our man reaches the top echelons of power his one and only consideration is to stay put. This metamorphosis of ordinary middle-class individuals, from a member of the public to a public servant to eventually the system’s servant is the story of all ‘successful’ bureaucrats.

Contrary to common perception, civil servants are not work-shy. They put in long hours to carry out their official duties ranging from providing the usually clueless minister with all that is necessary to run the show, to thankless jobs like maintaining law and order and of course, the mundane routine of implementing laid-down official procedures.

Being part of the state machinery in a state where the general inclination of the public is to make governing as difficult as possible is not an easy job and requires talent. The question is that if these individuals are so talented why is governance so bad.
The usual deduction is corruption; but the real reason is risk-aversion among civil servants, and the blame for that does not lie on them alone. The causes of risk-aversion are endless, ranging from systemic to social.

The system of appraisals puts so much in the hands of the seniors that a difference of opinion can be suicidal for a junior officer. There are hardly any independent and efficient checks in place to gauge the service of an officer beyond what his boss thinks — and that kind of predefines the winner of all arguments. None would risk his promotion by disagreeing with the one who is going to play a pivotal role to make it a possibility.

The most significant criterion for promotions is seniority. Other than the scenarios in road traffic, a junior civil servant usually can never overtake a senior, no matter how much the senior underperforms. Initiative, innovation and inspiration are not rewarded and might even backfire in cases when outdated rules and impertinent conventions are bypassed by an individual to get the job done swiftly. Later, they may come back to haunt, sometimes in the form of court petitions and at others in the form of departmental inquiries. This prompts civil servants to lie low and go with the flow.

Political influences are another cause of risk-aversion among civil servants. Saying ‘no’ to somebody who is in power takes a lot of courage and then being able to face the victimisation in the form of being transferred or made officer on special duty takes even more courage. Since gutsy individuals at the political level are nowhere to be seen, most civil servants just don’t risk it.

Civil servants are also restricted by anachronistic rules; service rules, code of conduct, secrecy act and what not. Times have changed but rules have not. In an era of media freedom, WikiLeaks and demand for laws for free access to information, our civil servants ironically are not supposed to talk to the media, write for newspapers, blog and, at times, even have an opinion.

Such bars are understandable in matters of state security but not all matters fall in that category. Notions of state security and official secrecy should not be used as a smoke screen to cover up malpractices. Actually, such rules are there to ensure that civil servants do not become whistleblowers. Given such preferences of the system, an upright individual finds it tough to rise to the top in the Pakistani bureaucracy and ends up feeling suffocated.

Lastly, a definite factor behind these risk-averse attitudes is the declining ‘esprit de corps’ among civil servants. Over the years, camaraderie has been eroded because of a number of factors — political inductions, military interventions, disproportionate remuneration and individual opportunism. This has resulted in the civil service becoming very weak as an institution.

It is said about pre-Partition ICS officers that such was their integrity and comradeship that it was very hard to victimise an officer who took a just stand as his fellow colleagues would stand by the principle as well as the individual.

Today, it is very hard to find an individual who would stand for principles and even if someone does rise to the occasion, his colleagues do not. Oligarchy has replaced camaraderie. Oligarchs stand for power, comrades for principles and that has made all the difference.

The writer is a civil servant.

syedsaadatwrites@gmail.com

They wanted to request the powerful government functionary to address some minor administrative issues that fell in his domain. In addition to being a British government functionary, Mr Jacob was also an inventor and on that day, he became so engrossed in his workshop that he did not attend to visitors from the general public. Later, when he realised that he had failed to attend to his official duties, he was so filled with regret that the next day, he set up an office under the sun. The intention was to make the self-indulgent Jacob of the day before appreciate the suffering of the people who were forced to wait because of him.

Perhaps for this reason, when decades later it was proposed that the settlement’s name be changed to something more ‘pious’, as has been done to many other cities in this land of the pure, the people of Jacobabad opposed it. Perhaps this is why John Jacob’s grave in Jacobabad is generally afforded the status of a saint’s mausoleum.

The events narrated above took place many years ago, in an era when we were not independent. But 65 years after Independence, in recent days, a news item entitled ‘‘Desperado’ SP shoots youth over trifle’ appeared in the columns of this newspaper. A senior police officer had shot a youngster dead over a petty parking dispute on chaand raat. Such an extreme reaction is indicative of the psychological ill-health and stress levels of the officer.

Dig a little deeper and you find plenty of occasions that reflect insane behaviour on the part of both military and civil officials.

Last year, the then commissioner of Gujranwala Division thrashed the assistant commissioner of Narowal for the rather laughable reason of not getting a washroom cleaned in anticipation of a visit by the chief minister.

Recently, several officers of the Pakistan Army were jailed by a military court upon being found guilty of having links to the Hizbut Tahrir, a banned organisation.

Then, the propensity of army chiefs to topple elected governments is not exactly the epitome of psychologically stable behaviour.

When officers show such tendencies, the lower cadres are sure to be infected as well. One extreme example is that of Malik Mumtaz Qadri, the security official who killed the then governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer.

On a less conspicuous but equally pernicious level, causing losses worth billions to the government kitty for just a few bucks in one’s personal bank account must also be included in the category of deviant behaviour.

A colleague in the civil service described this as being greedy to the extent of “killing a whole cow just to put five kilogrammes of meat in your deep freezer and leaving the rest of it to rot.” Both the civil and military bureaucracies have been considered guilty of such deeds, from the dubious purchase of ships in 1994 to that of railway engines recently.

While differing in their circumstances and scale, these myriad examples serve to show how many of us can become highly insensitive and resort to irrational behaviour.

Why do civilian and military officials so often fail to resist the abuse of official power? Such cases of indiscipline are not because of poor grooming or the lack of proper training; the National Police Academy, Islamabad, the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul, and the Civil Services Academy, Lahore, etc, are remarkable institutions. There is nothing wrong with their facilities, the training they provide or the principles they advocate. What, then, has gone wrong with government officers?

The answer is to be found in psychological health. Officers no longer take pride in serving the public; instead, they take pride in having cars as big as the house of a poor man and houses bigger than even his imagination. Another category of public officials takes pride in performing duties in the name of a skewed version of religion instead of official duties.

The solution to this mess is not simple, but one definite step towards it can be to focus on the psychological fitness of government functionaries. It is mandatory for both civil and military officials to undergo an annual medical exam; their physical health has to be in line with the duties they are supposed to perform during the year. Given the cases enumerated above, it would seem appropriate that officers be evaluated for psychological health and fitness as well; different categories of mental and emotional well-being can be developed just as has been done in terms of physical health.

In order to prevent the misuse of such a testing system, an independent, fair and transparent body of professionals from the field of psychology should be formed to oversee this; otherwise, given the level of sycophancy and nepotism prevalent in our system, such a body could create more psychological stress instead of helping reduce it.

The writer is a civil servant.

syedsaadatwrites@gmail.com

The groom tended to be intelligent, hardworking and progressive. He came from a closely knit-together family, and high moral values were strongly instilled in him. The bride was not too different either being the daughter of a family that laid great emphasis on education for sons as well as daughters. No one would have thought that it would be innocuous couples such as these that would effectively bring about a revolution in this country.

Before me sits an aging, retired civil servant in his rocking chair, reflecting upon the life he has lived. Calm, collected and content, he tells me with a shine in his eyes that a revolution is coming.

“Is it the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf tsunami you’re talking about?” I ask. “No, I’m talking about the professional working class that will set off a whirlpool that will sink all the wizards of exploitation, be they the politicians or the bureaucrats,” he answers.

In this gentleman’s view, it will not be the peasants of the country that will bring about change, for they are too oppressed. Neither will it be the elites, for they are too self-indulgent. Change, he believes, will be engineered by the professional middle class, doctors, teachers or multinational corporations’ employees, who earn enough money to afford a comfortable lifestyle and can thus afford to take a stand against being exploited.

This class of people is no longer silent. Slowly but surely, it is taking over the country. While it will not happen overnight, the change will come and it will come at the hands of people whose parents worked hard to raise a generation that has faith in the value of hard work against all odds and does not believe in getting ahead at the expense of other people.

Their parents made sure that they did not compromise on their ethics, with the father travelling on public transport and the mother sacrificing trips to the beauty parlour so that they could save enough to have their children educated respectably. Couples such as these passed up on many a candlelit dinner to make sure that their children went to bed early so that they could be up for school on time.

These children are young men and women now, and between them they are setting off waves of change that is bound to alter the status quo in which Pakistan has been stuck for years.

Consider the medics that have banded together to form the Young Doctors’ Association to protest for better compensation and to raise their voice against exploitation. While there are grounds to be critical of their methods, it is encouraging that these professionals want to work hard yet ensure that they are adequately compensated for that hard work. They do not seem to want to ditch the country by seeking opportunity abroad, but neither will they stand being victimised.

In a similar vein, a group of civil servants have formed an association for the protection of their rights. A petition filed recently in the Supreme Court asked for court intervention to ensure that civil servants are not transferred for denying the bigwigs an undue favour, as is often the case. They, too, do not want to abandon their country or join in the looting and plundering; they want the change that has surfaced to be sustained. There was a time when the bureaucracy was called the steel frame of the administration, and now it is taking that role back.

A good example of the professional class bringing about change would be Asad Umar, formerly the CEO of a business corporation. After having achieved huge success at a young age, he has joined politics. Indeed, the field of politics is slowly but surely slipping out of the hands of business barons and ill-intentioned waderas and being joined by corporate employees, engineers, doctors and newsmen. They are turning on the heat, and politics and this country are coming back to life.

Everyone wants to vote, everyone wants to raise a voice. On Facebook, on various blogspots, on Twitter and on the streets, everywhere in Pakistan we find people raising their voice. They are concerned about the state of the nation, while the escapists of old have died a natural death.

Now, the young men and women of this country want to live here and make a better living for themselves. This is what makes a country prosperous: we don’t really have to work for the betterment of the country, we just have to work for our own betterment and keep our moral compass intact, and the progress of the country becomes inevitable.

The old man sitting in the rocking chair and his wife have done their bit. They have brought up a generation that will bring about a revolution. And the nature of this revolution, like its originators, will be calm and seamless. It will not shed the blood of the oppressors; it will be gracious and forward-looking.

The writer is a civil servant.

syedsaadatwrites@gmail.com

Mr X travelled a few kilometres in his commute from home to office and back again. The total cost of his trip could not be more than Rs200 per day. This would be inclusive of the cost of fuel (petrol of course as we would not want our bureaucrat to waste his time in long CNG-seeking queues composed of the poor public), the cost of the vehicle`s daily wear and tear and the single packet of a popular brand of potato chips Mr X liked to munch on while driving.

Given the long weekend Mr X enjoyed, his monthly cost of travel to work came to Rs4,400. This was fine, but when Mr X found himself promoted to BPS-20, suddenly his monthly cost of travel rocketed to Rs65,960 that amounts to Rs3,000 per day.

Why? Because from that day on Mr X started throwing out Rs100 currency notes from his car randomly because being the honest officer that he is, he wants to make sure that all the money given to him as conveyance allowance is used up in his travel to office. So any reader finding these currency notes strewn on roads leading to the secretariat in Islamabad should know that Mr X has gone to office.

On Dec 3, 2011 Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani approved the rules/policy for Compulsory Monetisation ofTransport Facility for Civil Servants (BPS-20 to BPS22) according to which officials cars will be taken back from those officers serving in pay scales BPS20 to BPS-22. They will be given a huge amount of money as conveyance allowance. A BPS-22 officer will be paid Rs95,910as conveyance allowance, a BPS-21 will be given Rs77,430 and an officer in BPS-20 will receive Rs65,960 for the same purpose. These amounts are actually more than the salary these officers draw.

Apart from that, the above-mentioned officials will be authorised to use general-duty official vehicles for travelling for official purposes other than the daily commute to office. It would be stating the obvious that often official vehicles are used to pick and drop the university-going son of the `sahib` take the `begum sahiba` shopping and for the driving lessons of the younger daughter.

I am pretty sure that general-duty vehicles would be used the same way by the officers in control and it would be a case of having your cake and eating it too for the big bosses. It is to be noted here that government officials serving in BPS-1 to BPS-10 are being paid Rs1,150 as conveyance allowance, BPS11 to BPS-15 Rs1,360 and BPS-16 to BPS-19 Rs2,480.

Unfortunately, instead of giving the lower cadres a muchneeded raise the big bosses have decided to fill their own pockets. This is not something new; a few years ago, the then federal secretaries decided to give themselves one more plot of land in Islamabad in addition to the one they get at the end of service. Fudging figures and sugarcoating the reality comes naturally to our governance gurus so it is not with surprise that we note that the implementation of the monetisation of transport facility would result in likely savings of Rs1.369bn per annum. I have serious doubts about the credibility of this figure but even if it is to be believed, then a saner dispersion of the conveyance allowance could well take the figure to 1.5bn per annum if not more.

I am not against austerity measures. In fact, an effort in this direction is commendable. But I seriously believe that the authority that finally signs such approvals should take off its blindfold once in a while to see that there is more to it than what meets the eye.

Lastly, it has been a year since I wrote a piece titled `I am corrupt, honestly` in this paper. The article triggered quite a debate and those who read it would know what I am talking about. For those who have not read the piece, the article was about the appallingly low salaries civil servants get at the start of their careers. Though things haven`t changed much since then, the good thing about all bad things is that one gets used to the situation, so most of my young civil servant friends have stopped complaining.

But somehow the extremely cold winter and the self-serving policymaking at the top of the bureaucracy ladder have caused a resurgence of old pains. Nothing was done to facilitate the young officers joining the civil service but when it came to devising a policy for monetisation of transport facilities the babus in Islamabad came up with a mind-boggling policy.

They say one can fool some people for some time and then one tends to find new people to fool. But the audacity of our bureaucracy is that it fools the same set over and over again.

At such audacity, I am stunned, honestly.

The writer is a civil servant.

s_a_h_2@hotmail.com

After reading the first paragraph, readers would reach out for their laptops and blackberries to send me messages about the absurdity of my choice. However, I would like them to consider the three most important technical organisations in the country: Pakistan Railways (PR), the National Highway Authority (NHA) and Wapda. The gentlemen heading these organisations are senior bureaucrats from service groups that have nothing to do with anything of a technical nature.

They are all civil servants who had not served in the departments they are heading prior to their appointment to the top slot.
Secondly, during their careers they have hardly been associated with any job in the technical domain. Thirdly and most importantly, they are bureaucrats occupying positions that, for the sake of Pakistan, should have been occupied by technocrats. However, do not blame them for this; it is absolutely normal in a country where a banker can be turned into a prime minister and back with enviable ease.

Logically speaking, someone from within the officers of an organisation who has given a couple of decades of his life to it and knows the dynamics of the organisation inside out deserves to eventually head it, instead of someone who specialises in not specialising in anything — the typical bureaucrat that is. Degrees earned miles away without the recipient having a clue as to how he or she would actually make use of them hardly helps when it comes to decision-making. Keep in mind the various unions, logistics, attitudes, technical knowledge and vested interests.

If Microsoft had been an organisation in the Government of Pakistan, an MA Persian who cleared the civil service exam in 1979 and knew only one meaning of the word ‘windows’ might have been its CEO.

The other day it was interesting to read the ‘50 years’ section of this paper which said something about Pakistan Railways making a considerable profit in 1961. The news item prompted me to research when things took a turn for the worse in the case of PR. I figured out that until the 1970s, PR was a self-sustaining organisation run by an autonomous railway board which constituted a member traffic, member mechanical, member civil and member finance.

Apart from the member finance all were Railways employees specialising in their respective fields and the PR chairman was also appointed from among these three. That was PR’s golden era, one reason, apart from many others, being that technocrats were in control.

The problems our technical organisations face are not of a commercial nature because the number of passengers willing to travel by train is still pretty high; electricity consumers are desperate to purchase power at any cost; and the need for roads cannot be denied especially when militants continue to take over and destroy infrastructure in the north, including roads and bridges.

I am fully aware that appointing a technical head would not act as a magic wand and matters would not change overnight but at least it would be a step in the right direction. At the moment, we have our eyes set on the moon while we are actually drilling the earth and digging ourselves into a deeper hole.

Some might argue that the chairman PR has general managers from the Railways group and the engineering wing at his disposal to assist him, and similarly the NHA or for that matter Wapda has many technical members who give their input. But the point is this situation ensures that the chairman plays into the hands of those who are better equipped in the said field.
Arbitrary appointments devoid of vision cannot lead to progress. One day a certain officer from a certain fraternity is appointed head of the NHA, the next day he might find himself an OSD and the next something else.

Another interesting fact is that the ‘spoils system’ prevalent in the political parties of Pakistan ensures that the political heads of the ministries are generally clueless. It is part and parcel of the system that we have, though maybe there is nothing bad about it as long as the ‘cluelessness’ ends with the political heads, and the secretary, who happens to be the eyes, ears and hands of the minister, is somebody who knows it all.

Lastly, a suggestion for our policymakers is to think along the lines of establishing a tangible criterion for appointments to top positions in important techno-based organisations. There should be a check list ascertaining the qualifications and the years of service in the said department as eligibility for heading these organisations.

If nobody does that, somebody should move the Supreme Court with a petition in the same manner that we are moving the SC in every other matter. Some, including old-school bureaucrats, who may be holding or vying for such positions themselves, might find these views disturbing. But the point is that they will retire in a few years. It is the country that still has a long way to go and that longs for a paradigm shift.

The writer is a civil servant.

s_a_h_2@hotmail.com

To put it bluntly, I want to loot and plunder, and to put it politically correctly, I want to serve the people of Pakistan.

This is the typical question-and-answer session that takes place between aspirants to the civil service and the interview panel of the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC), the body in charge of recruitment in the federal civil services of Pakistan.

However, one obvious clarification is that only the politically correct part of the answer is said out loud. The rest is left unsaid because actions speak louder than words, so why waste time by spelling them out and shooting down your chances of getting selected and living your ‘dream’ later?

A few years ago, some lecturers were hired after following due procedure through the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC). But unlike the standard practice for PPSC selectees they were offered contract employment instead of
permanent employment, and that too at appallingly low salaries with no fringe benefits.

These lecturers got together and secured a meeting with the chief secretary to inform him of the injustice being done. All their hopes were shattered when they were told by the top bureaucrat that ‘I did not force you to join this department, so either put up or shut up’.

A friend, who till then was oozing with the ‘serve the nation’ spirit, was also part of that congregation of lecturers. The man got so disheartened that he resigned within a fortnight after the incident, prepared for the CSS exam, passed with flying colours and now, about corruption in bureaucracy he says that in Rome do as the Romans do.

This paradigm shift has helped him afford a holiday in Rome recently. He often says that if that meeting had not taken place he would have still been serving the nation. It seems like he was still angry despite an enviable holiday.

If serving the country is the prime goal then why would we chase certain postings? It would be stating the obvious to say that bureaucrats do pull strings to get certain postings known to be lucrative. What makes a posting lucrative? Is it the amount of public service you can manage being in a certain position?

The officers posted in Nipa, the National Institute of Public Administration, which has now been merged into the National School of Public Policy, used to joke about their posting at Nipa, referred to as ‘no immediate posting available’, when as a matter of fact being able to groom officers to be true servants of the nation should be considered the greatest form of public service.

Even now, the officers posted at the Civil Services Academy or other similar training institutes meant for training public servants are considered to be sidelined from ‘good’ postings, and with due respect they are considered to be misfits for field postings.

Bureaucrats go out of their way to get postings in departments like land revenue, certain assignments in income tax, where you can catch some real big fish to devour, and customs, where containers can just vanish into thin air causing a loss of billions to the exchequer. The vanishing trick is certainly something that would put the magicians in the pharaoh’s court to shame.

Then there are those who run after postings in departments like FIA, ISI and NAB. Is it because most of us are undiscovered Sherlock Holmes or real-life James Bonds? Or is it because of the nuisance value attached to these departments? The ability to flout the law and get away with it is not a service to the nation. Or is it?

A couple of months ago, the then chief commissioner and inspector general of police, Islamabad, acknowledged before the Senate Standing Committee on Interior that the majority of transfers/postings in the police department were made on ‘consideration’ — consideration being the wishes of the politicians or others whose wishes are worthy of consideration. This honesty deserves applause.

I am not blaming anybody but I am a little confused about why postings in departments such as the Public Works Department, Wapda, Railways, National Highway Authority, the Capital Development Authority, the petroleum ministry, etc., that spend a lot of money, are so sought after by bureaucrats.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the ability to oblige by awarding contracts, jobs, and kickbacks is a lot more in such departments as compared to departments like education or environment or ministries such as youth and women development, which are high on public service but perhaps low on self-service.

Correct me again if I am wrong, but not many of us would like to serve in the education department. I so wish somebody would contradict me on this. I know a man who resigned from a very respectable lectureship in basic pay scale-17 to be a mukhtiarkar (revenue official), which is a BPS-16 position. Why and what for is anybody’s guess.

We want change but with such attitudes ripe amongst every single one of us Imran Khan might not be enough. The only plausible recipe for change seems to be stumbling upon the magic lamp of Aladdin.

Lastly, I would humbly suggest to the interview panel at the FPSC to revise the questions they ask, from ‘why do you want to join the Civil Service of Pakistan?’ to more objective and relevant ones like ‘what would you prefer when you are selected, a position with more power or with more money?’

The writer is a civil servant.

s_a_h_2@hotmail.com