Heavy at the top

Are the government departments in the country overstaffed? While the beneficiaries of overstaffing consider it a boon for themselves, taxpayers feel dismayed over the waste of their tax money. Employing more officials and workforce than needed to carry out a certain workload amounts to being unfair to the taxpayers. Taxpayers would happily pay their taxes if they felt their hard-earned money was spent in the right direction and for the right causes.

Our government organisations, including administrative departments, are over-employed. With time, they turn top-heavy despite the fact that there is no proportionate increase in the workload. The functioning of certain departments is more visible because of the nature of their duty. Let’s consider the Motorway Police that the BBC once commented was professional and performed their duties efficiently. The level of their performance seems to have gone down lately.

For instance, there was a time when if someone drove in the fast lane other than when overtaking, s/he was flagged down, reprimanded or fined. Now driving in the fast lane and playing with one’s cell phone is ignored by the Motorway Police. Even patrolling on the motorway is not much visible. When randomly inquired, the reason given is lack of transport. Now where have the flashy cars in which motorway police patrolled disappeared?

During a recent trip on M-2 and further on M-1, I observed long lines of vehicles waiting to pass through the toll plazas. More ludicrous is the location of two toll plazas, one on exiting to Islamabad and the other on entering into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, situated a few hundred meters apart. Only one toll plaza could have been sufficient to handle the traffic. The time one saves by traveling on the motorway is wasted away by waiting in long queues at the toll plazas.

At the administrative level, when tehsils upgrade to districts and districts to divisions, it results in phenomenal addition of numerous civil departments. An increase in the number of bureaucrats means more office buildings, palatial residences and, of course, dozens of gleaming new vehicles, including SUVs and double-cabins with tinted windows. How the people of the area benefit from such high-profile arrangements is a matter of one's guess. When Layyah in the backwaters of southern Punjab was a tehsil and later upgraded to a district, it made no difference to the lives of the people. Only the bureaucratic setup swelled up.

Restructuring and reducing the bureaucracy’s size is always part of the manifesto of political parties before coming into power. Once in power, all such reforms are put on the backburner. For instance, in March last year the prime minister presided over a high-level meeting attended by Minister for Planning Asad Umar, Minister for Privatisation Muhammad Mian Soomro, Adviser on Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Adviser on Trade and Commerce Abdul Razak Dawood. The prime minister instructed to privatise the loss-making state owned entities within year 2020. Hardly any of these have been privatised a year later.

What to talk of the SMEs, the humongous loss-makers in the country – PIA and Pakistan Steel Mills – still gobble up billions of public taxes every year. It was embarrassing indeed when a Malaysian court ordered the seizure of a PIA Boeing 777 at the Kuala Lumpur Airport in January for not paying the lease money to a leasing company, especially when the passengers were on-board. While talking about the PIA and PSM, let’s not forget the Pakistan Railways. Train accidents are now a matter of routine. Train bogies often derail on the poorly maintained dilapidated rail tracks – but no heads roll.

Instead of privatising the perennial loss-makers to cut losses, novel methods are devised to turn them profitable. Such tactics, motivated by the personal interests of influential groups, didn’t work in the past and nor will these work in the future. The government must consider abolishing redundant departments and loss-making giants. Less government rules are the key to good governance

The writer is a freelance columnist based in Lahore.

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