Cabinet meeting

That the PM chaired a cabinet meeting in which the performance of every ministers was assessed is a praiseworthy practice. But unless there is a well-crafted system of performance assessment such sessions will not produce excellence in performance. How can this activity be made more meaningful? It will be most desirable to ask each minister to share his/her annual performance plan signed by the department and approved by the PM. The plan’s annual targets must be realistic based on the resources needed to achieve these.

A monthly progress report should come to the PM secretariat for any feedback from the monitoring team. This will alert ministers regarding any shortfall in their quarterly performance. It is also important for the PM to realise that public opinion is the ultimate yardstick to ascertain whether performance claims of the ministers are authentic. For this, it will be imperative that the public must be informed with respect to the effective/ineffective performance of different Ministers. The recognition of good performance ought to come from the public and it will come if the results are visible on the ground. Otherwise such exercises will be only meant to please the boss and can eventually lead to flattery which happens to be a major weakness of narcissistic leaders.

Dr Zafar I Qureshi

Lahore

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This refers to the news reports ‘Imran chairs longest-ever cabinet meeting in Pakistan’s history’ and ‘Bridging yawning tax shortfall of FBR: Does govt have no option except new taxes?’ (December 11). By all account, the government’s performance in the first four months has been dismal. The economy is in acute distress while the FBR is facing the shortfall of around

Rs100 billion.

The PTI government should strictly focus on enacting new legislation. Not a single legislation has seen the light of day during the first four months. What the PTI can learn from past leaders like Ayub Khan is that it needs to select an excellent team of professionals to run the country and delivered results.

Arif Majeed

Karachi