- Form and essence!
Governance constitutes, for ordinary people, a daily struggle for survival and dignity. Ordinary people are mostly humiliated at the hands of public institutions. To the ordinary, lack of good governance means police brutality, corruption in accessing basic public services that includes health and education in terms of ghost schools, teacher absenteeism, missing medicines, high cost and low access to justice, criminalisation of politics and lack of social justice. These are just few manifestations of the crisis of governance.
If we dwell on the question that why civil service reforms are an urgent need of the time and what is the rationale behind these reforms, the answer is multi-dimensional. Sometimes it is in efficient delivery of services to the public and sometimes it’s the glass ceiling between the federal and provincial officers that calls out for reforms in these services. Glass ceilings have always been demotivating as they cater the talent to breed to its full form. Recently Prime Minister Imran Khan agreed to the constitution of the Task Force on Civil Service Reforms and the Task Force on Austerity and Restructuring of the Government. It’s a great dilemma that the 4,000 PMS officers of Pakistan have been deliberately ousted from participating in this noble and holy task. Since they have been over thrown the definition of civil services need to be revised. Civil service is defined as any government service in which a position is secured through competitive public examination and also all those employed in government administration except in the armed forces, legislature, or judiciary. The crux comes out to be considerably justified that civil services include officers of both federal and provincial governments.
All Pakistan Provincial Service consists of Provincial Management Service, Provincial Service and Provincial Secretariat Services. They are the main force working at the grass root level or in other words the point of initiation of something important to be implemented. They are working from section officers to the secretary levels and in the fields working from assistant commissioners to commissioners. They are an integral part of district administration and divisional administration and its surveillance. This field is claimant of the one being running the machinery of government. The main issue is federal service dominating provincial services because of the unconstitutional IPCC (Mueen Qureshi) formula of 1993. It was the care taker government of Mueen Qureshi, economist, civil servant and prime minister that time, though in spite of clear rulings from superior judiciary that care taker governments cannot give long term policies, after 25 years the unconstitutional formula lingers on the head of this part of bureaucracy. According to this formula the percentage set for PMS from BPS 17 to 22 is 75pc in BPS17, 60pc in BPS18, 50pc in BPS19, 40pc in BPS 20, 35pc in BPS 21 and zero percent in BPS 22. Whilst for the DMG officers the criteria is entirely different from BPS 17 to 22 according to this formula 25pc for BPS 17, 40pc BPS 18, 50pc BPS 19, 60pc BPS 20, 65pc BPSb21 and 100pc in BPS 22.
In BS 17 PAS, though they are not all Pakistan service but they are service of federation, have notified 72 seats in Punjab which they should have notified 235 as per 25pc in BPS 17. The purpose behind it was to have minimal officers in least grade and they may reach the highest grade with optimum speed. Whilst the provincial service groups languish, suffer and come up with speed that fate had set for them. Hence, it’s against the constitutional provisions not providing the adequate rights to the provincial officers even to join the posts of assistant, deputy and commissioners though lying vacant resultantly demotivating officers of this cadre. In BPS 19 there are 66 vacancies, In BPS 20 there are 37 vacancies in BPS 21 there are four vacancies.
Grass is always greener on the other side of the pasture. The terms of reference of the Federal Task Force to the extent of provincial and local governments are derogatory to Article 240 (b) which enunciates “All-Pakistan Service means a service common to the Federation and the Provinces…”
The initiative taken by Prime Minister Imran Khan on formulating task force on civil service reforms is indeed a welcome step. But the irony is that not a single member from provincial services has been made part of it. Actually they are the ones implementing policies at grass root level of the government’s machinery. Indeed it’s a principle of change that whenever any change is settled, the major stake holders are taken on board otherwise that change is supposed to fail. Until and unless these two parts of bureaucracy are taken together the reforms in civil services is a far cry from real reforms. The government should uphold the provisions of constitution and rule of law for bringing real and just reforms and abridge the distance between these two bureaucracies (federal and provincial).
Grass is always greener on the other side of the pasture. The terms of reference of the Federal Task Force to the extent of provincial and local governments are derogatory to Article 240 (b) which enunciates “All-Pakistan Service means a service common to the Federation and the Provinces…” and is jurisdiction of provincial assemblies. Provincial assemblies should appoint their task force for the reforms in these services. Otherwise as to the federal task force, there should be representation of provincial services. If it is dominated by only one service group the desired results of the reforms cannot be derived. If we want to bring about change and restore the first three attributes of civil servants – capacity, competency and courage — these reforms must be inculcated while the compassion has to be imbibed through greater exposure, awareness and incentives and bringing everyone on board without any prejudice and discrimination.