‘People no longer trust bureaucrats as they have stopped thinking about them’

Speaking his heart out in his address to members of the English Speaking Union of Pakistan (ESUP), Sindh Chief Secretary Syed Asif Hyder Shah said on Friday that people no longer trust bureaucrats because they have stopped thinking about the masses.

“As civil servants, the biggest challenge we face is the trust deficit,” Shah said, as he delivered his address on ‘Challenges in Governing Sindh’. The event was organised by the ESUP at a local hotel.

“When we try to take initiative, the first obstacle we face is that people don’t trust what we say, and we have to prove that we mean what we preach,” the chief secretary said, advising young officers to “go the extra mile, work extra hours, and make your existence relevant and valuable.”

He instructed them to focus on four key qualities: integrity, integrity of purpose, hard work, and courage, stressing that with these qualities, they would earn the trust of the people. “We civil servants have stopped thinking about the people. I tell my officers to come up with interventions that are people-centric,” he maintained.

Shah said that good officers who are upright do not take illegal orders. “We prefer to quit rather than comply with such orders. We must realise one thing: ultimate decision-making rests with the political government. The mistake we, as civil servants, sometimes make is looking down upon politicians, believing that everything they do is wrong and that everything we do is right. What is right for us should be right for them, and what is wrong for us should be wrong for them as well,” he went.

He also rejected the impression of pressure on bureaucrats to follow orders, asking them to do their work the way they want, but always strive to find solutions. “We also need to discipline ourselves,” he added.

The province’s top bureaucrat highlighted that it was not civil servants’ job to govern but to steer and implement the decisions of the political government. “The difference is that I always tell the political governments that it is their vision to decide where they want to go, and the bureaucracy’s role is to show them how to get there,” he said. However, he added servants do have a significant role to play.

Shah said he learned that the real theme of ‘ignorance is bliss’ holds some truth because, as chief secretary, he sometimes feels that knowing too much can become a problem for oneself. He said the mother of all problems was the growing population, which was putting strain on almost every sector, infrastructure, education, health, and sanitation. He added that during his tenure as the federal climate change secretary, he said he had been telling the government that population is was climate change issue.

About issues facing the city, the chief secretary said that uncontrolled urbanisation had put pressure on resources. For example, he said, the water board’s system was designed for 8.5 million people but was now expected to feed 20 million. Besides, multiple civic agencies working in the city was like “too many cooks spoil the broth’.

“An entire city cannot be fixed overnight. We have identified major arteries in every district of Karachi to address first, as this will give people some confidence. Once we have enough resources, we will scale up the efforts.”

He said he was also working on a complaint redressal mechanism. Aziz Memon, patron-in-chief ESUP and president International Council of ESU, praised Sindh CM Murad Ali Shah for selecting the ‘best possible officer’ Shah as the CS. He said the English Speaking Union (ESU) was founded in 1918, and had been around for over 100 years.

He highlighted that the charity was involved in various activities, including competitions, debates and scholarships. Our competition rounds take place in cities across Pakistan—Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad. “We encourage young people to get involved, using the English language as a means to promote peace and harmony,” he added.