The Supreme Court of Pakistan has taken the issue of politicisation of civil bureaucracy and the police force that have becomes personal servant of politicians. The government servants, instead of serving the general public, are serving the interest of the chief ministers and ministers to have lucrative positions in their service.
There have been number of commissions to reform the civil bureaucracy but unfortunately none of these commissions’ recommendations were implemented. For the government jobs, the system formed by colonial masters to rule the natives is still being used.
The world has changed and the new administrative and management systems have been developed and are being used by other countries.
Many countries now have E-government where the extensive use of information technology has been made a priority. Although we have thousands of IT qualified persons in the country unemployed, our ruling elite is not prepared to apply the IT tools to provide better services to the general public.
We are still using the outdated system of recruitment of civil servants and police personnel. In the prevailing system, a doctor with an MBBS degree and engineers with bachelor degree of engineering are working as police officers and in customs and tax departments. How can their academic qualifications help them hold public administration jobs? Why aren’t those who have studied public administration are considered more suitable for the public administration jobs?
I request the Supreme Court of Pakistan that while they will be ensuring the security of jobs of the government servants and emphasising that the government servants should work according to the laws and should not accept illegal order of politicians, it should also direct the government to reform and establish human resources authorities at the federal and provincials level to recruit government employees. And there should be no ‘incentive’ of corruption to join the government jobs.
S T HUSSAIN
Lahore
