ISLAMABAD, Mar 07 :Former Governor State Bank of Pakistan and economist, Dr Ishrat Hussain, has been appointed as Advisor to the Prime Minister for executing Institutional reforms and streamlining functioning of the government departments.
The newly appointed advisor Dr Ishrat Hussain while talking to newsmen said that the present government led by Prime Minister Imran Khan also took the challenge to reforms in departments and organization to make them financially viable and enhance their performance.
Although the previous governments made tall claims about enhancing efficiency of the government departments and state owned enterprises, he said, adding every passing day witnessed deterioration in dispensation and financial non-viability of key departments like Pakistan Railways, Pakistan International Airlines and Pakistan Steel besides many other small enterprises.
“Institutional reforms have been divided into four parts. First to reorganize federal institutions by abandoning unnecessary institutions and merging those performing the same job,” Dr Ishrat Hussain said. “There were 441 government departments with many set up without any future planning. We have reorganized and reduced these institutions to 342 either by merging, shutting down or privatizing.”
Secondly, the Advisor said the government is reorganizing, reviving, and restructuring the key institutions such as Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), Pakistan Railways, Pakistan Steels Mills and other State Owned Enterprises (SOEs).
Ishrat Hussain mentioned to civil service reforms as third area and said, major reforms have been finalized and some are implemented as well. “In my view, the weakest aspect of the country’s civil service was performance evaluation and promotion policy as we don’t differentiate between a good performer and a bad performer.”
In new performance policy, he said, instead of depending merely on Annual Confidential Report (ACR) of employees, a system of key performance indicators has been introduced.”The promotion would now be on the basis of performance, training and competence and not the seniority alone.”
Dr Ishrat Hussain said when the promotion rules were implemented, somebody challenged it in the court which decided that rules were established purely on merit and there was nothing wrong with them.
Under the civil service reforms, he stated, the federal services posts are being downsized from 640,000 to 570,000 as 70,000 vacant posts in Basic Pay Scales 1 to 16 were being scrapped and the savings made would be used for increasing salaries of the civil servants.
Similarly reformatting of the Central Superior Services (CSS) is also under consideration, he said. ”After implementation of the reforms package, professionals would have greater prospects of advancement. We are proposing National Executive Service for the top tier, composed of generalists and specialists.”
He said the CSS examination should be revamped asking the candidates to appear in subjects of interest pertaining to the service they want to join. “The candidates must choose their area of interest before taking the nationwide competitive examination.”
Fourthly, he said the reforms are being made in business processes by replacing the old filing system with the electronic based office work (E-Office). “All material would be available on website and people would not need to physically visit offices in most cases.”
