Bureaucracy reforms remain a distant dream

ISLAMABAD: MNA Captain (retd) Safdar has shown no confidence in government regarding bureaucratic matters, but the government has no time to ponder on a set of civil service reforms recommended by the Planning Commission and reforms ministry.

Sources said that despite repeated requests, these recommendations are not being placed before the federal cabinet for approval and implementation.

The source said that the issue of civil service reforms package is being delayed for the last several months. Numerous times the Planning Commission was told that the matter will be placed before the cabinet but it had not been done as yet.

Last week, Captain (retd) Mohammad Safdar focused on the government wrongs during his speech in parliament.Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle in the National Assembly had supported Safdar’s views and expressed lack of confidence in the government.

They, however, suggested that promotion of bureaucrats should be dealt with by parliament, which is likely to further politicise the bureaucracy.Capt Safdar termed the bureaucracy “an unbridled horse” and said it paid no heed to the complaints lodged by parliamentarians regarding their constituencies.

Strongly reacting to Capt Safdar’s recipe, a senior bureaucrat said, “We need to depoliticise the civil service and not further politicise it.” He added that instead of reforming the bureaucracy, they (MNAs) want to settle their personal agendas through this mechanism of involving parliamentarians in promotion.

“How can the MNAs committee decide on officers’ promotion?” another bureaucrat asked, suggesting that MNAs appear to be browbeating only those members of bureaucracy who despite politicisation do not submit to their wishes.

In view of the politicisation of bureaucracy, there is a growing demand from within the bureaucracy to reform the civil service to enable it meet the modern-day challenges.However, it is lamented that the government has become the major stumbling block for the much-needed structural and institutional reforms. Except one, none of the proposals presented by the Planning and Reform Commission has been approved during the last three years.

As reported by The News a few months back, after blocking some of the summaries, returning a few others, the Planning and Reforms Commission was told to approach the federal cabinet to get its reforms agenda approved.

However, since then despite indicating several times, these reforms have not been discussed by the cabinet as yet.For those eager to get the reform agenda implemented to improve governance and better the quality of the civil service, there is no idea when the cabinet will meet and how it could be ensured that the Planning Commission’s reform agenda is taken up for consideration.

The government during the first year of its present term had authorised the Planning Division to prepare the structural reforms to improve governance and overhaul the civil bureaucracy. However, when it comes to implementation of the reform agenda, the government itself emerged as the major impediment.

Different reform proposals, prepared through consensus after prolonged discussions with stakeholders were submitted for approval but only one single proposal has been approved as yet i.e. increasing the maximum age for CSS candidates from 28 to 30.

The age limit was being primarily increased to improve minimum qualification from 14 years of study to 16 years but this part of the proposal remains unimplemented.

The Planning Commission wanted to reform the Central Superior Services (CSS) exam system, which included enhancing the age limit of the CSS candidates, upgrading minimum education qualification and introducing specialization-based streams for the CSS exam.