Just as feared?
Ironically, frequent signs that the government continues to be behind the curve on crucial capacity building matters regarding CPEC are no longer surprising, but they are still shocking. The latest news report about the planning ministry being clueless about the human resource assessment, for example, ought to have sounded alarm bells in Islamabad. Yet it, too, drew little save the usual “game changer” and “higher than mountains, deeper than oceans” rhetoric. Considering how things have gone so far, the confidence could imply one of two things.
One, the government has indeed, as its champions say, cooked up an ambitious plan involving sweeping bureaucratic reforms and HR expansion and is keeping it close to the chest for political mileage. Or two, it really hasn’t budged on too many prerequisites, especially long term things like HR and reforms, and charges about its obsession with energy projects alone (to bag the next election) are true. But since bureaucratic reforms were torpedoed by the babu lobby itself, it’s difficult to see what a secret plan might achieve now. Also, with both the planning ministry and CPEC project director’s office unaware about the number of breakdown of the so-called employment bonanza, the secret HR thing seems a little far-fetched too.
Granted, energy is crucial to industry, etc, and will win immediate votes, as opposed to medium to long term social overhead capital concerns. But ignoring the building blocks of the project will compromise its viability sooner than later. It has already become controversial, to say the least, and the Chinese have been unhappy for a while now. So far HR holes that Pakistan cannot plug have been handled through imported labour from China. If that continues, the employment opportunities that the government claims will not materialise. And the political cost, needless to say, would be just as great as the financial loss. That nobody in government knows how many engineers, IT experts, architects, etc, will be employed with and through CPEC is indeed startling. There seems some truth to concerns, after all, that the make or break moment might already be at hand. The government needs to appreciate these concerns and address them before it is too late.