KP improving services sector: Economist

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has figured in The Economist as a party that is trying to improve services in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; however, it has fallen short on its promises in some sectors yet it has turned out to be a better government in Pakistan’s “wildest province”.

The Economist has, in its article, “Carrying on up the Khyber: Imran Khan’s party improves services in Pakistan’s wildest province, But can the PTI stay in power?” has pointed out that the reform is possible in KP is down to improved security following the army’s anti-Taliban campaign in 2014. Better the government has helped too. Ahead of an election due to be held in 2018, Pakistanis wonder how far the PTI has fulfilled its promise to do two unusual things: run a clean government, and transform hospitals and schools. The evidence is clear on corruption, says the Economist.

Ministers no longer drive about arrogantly in motorcades a dozen vehicles long. The PTI’s term has seen little scandal and the party has ended a free-for-all in which provincial assembly members could appoint friends and family to public-sector jobs. Federal handouts to the provinces have increased, and, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, money is at last ending up where it is meant to. The PTI now wants to see locals flocking to use public services. It has certainly made schools more appealing: the party has appointed 40,000 more teachers, rebuilt institutions blown up by the Taliban and furnished others with toilets and electricity and most importantly, teacher absenteeism has fallen, the Economist writes.

It adds that it took Imran Khan’s inexperienced party two years to get a handle on the government, and many of its reforms so far, according to Faisal Bari of LUMS University, need much longer to get entrenched. Some of its more notable improvements are hardly photogenic. It is one thing for people gleefully to take selfies in front of a new flyover in Peshawar, and another to do the same in front of new toilets in a rural girls’ school. The diagnosis is less mixed when it comes to health care. The PTI has employed many more medical staff, raising the ratio of doctors per 1,000 people from 0.16 to 0.24. It has also begun, albeit far from smoothly, to roll out a comprehensive health-insurance card for poor families. All this has had an effect. The number of operations in public hospitals has doubled since 2013; inpatient cases have risen by half as much again. Such change comes despite objections from special interests that lose out from reforms. Pharmacists broke the shelves of a new drug dispensary at one Peshawar hospital, so incensed were they by its offering medicine at the wholesale price.

Explaining the negative side of KP government, The Economist writes, while quoting Khalid Masud, Director of the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar (in reference to health care reforms), “of the 45 senior consultants at the hospital, many pop in for no more than an hour a day if at all. Then they leave for their private clinics, taking with them those patients who can afford to pay. Patients without money can die before they see a specialist at the 1,750-bed facility. Such is the state of public health care for the 27m residents of Pakistan’s mountainous, troubled border region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa". A recent law seeks to pin wayward doctors to their official place of work. Only a handful has reappeared at the notorious Lady Reading. But about 60 are back at work at another Peshawar hospital nearby.”

In reference to education sector achievements, the writer is of the view: “But the PTI’s claim that about 100,000 students have chosen to switch from private to public schools is based on dodgy data. There are other bones to pick. In 2013, the PTI allowed its coalition partner, the Jamaat-e-Islami, to remove pictures in textbooks of women without a veil, among other measures. Yet the PTI may struggle to win a second term in 2018. One problem is excessive promises. Mr Khan, who broke into politics after a stellar career as a cricketer, pledged a “tsunami” of change. But it took his inexperienced party two years to get a handle on the government. That Mr Khan himself appears to have lost interest in the province does not help. He aspires to national office and spends much of his time heckling the prime minister, who is under investigation for corruption. The PTI is starting to look more like the established parties. Having long mocked rapid-transit bus lanes, a favourite pork-barrel project of such parties, as a costly distraction from public-sector reform, the PTI is now building one of its own in Peshawar. It is said to be the country’s most expensive, per kilometre, yet, the Economist says.