A lumbering hassle: ‘Pakistan’s civil services is mediocre at best’

Dr Ishrat Hussain talks about the downfall of civil services, once the ‘backbone’ of the government

LAHORE: Pakistan civil services has been in the doldrums owing to a lack of merit, quality training and performance evaluation system, Institute of Business Administration (IBA) former dean Dr Ishrat Husain said at a session of the Afkar-i-Taza conference on Sunday. “As a result, vested interests of political governments and military rulers have rotted the system,” he said.

The session was titled Reforms or Bust: The Challenges of Civil Service Reforms.

Husain said that the writ of the state had weakened and had become ineffective because of the failure of civil services. “Whether it is a matter of internal security; law and order; ensuring access to basic services which the state has to provide; or economic management, we see deterioration everywhere.”

However, he said, it did not happen all of a sudden. There were various empirical studies conducted on the civil services in the ’50s and ’60s which showed that Pakistan’s civil service was indeed the backbone of the government, he said. “Whether it was a matter of settling the refugee crisis, setting up a new government or managing foreign policy, the civil service had risen to the task.”

Historically, the armed forces, which never attracted more than a mediocre cadre into their ranks, were nowhere compared to the efficiency, integrity and effectiveness of the civil services, Husain said. Since then, there has been a decline in civil services and at the same time, the armed forces were seen to have invested in their set up with the intent to transform their mediocre human resource into first rate human capital. “They then filled the vacuum created due to a decline in the civil services.”

He pointed out that the civil services had started deteriorating in the ’70s when the constitutional guarantee for the civil services was removed. Later, the Unified Civil Services system further increased frustration and served to demoralise civil servants, he said. He said that in Zia-ul-Haq’s period, the armed forces became strong and civil servants subservient.

“They were now tasked with executing the agenda of the military according to the wishes of a particular individual.” In the ’90s, politicisation of the civil services became so entrenched that every time there was a change of government, civil servants were reshuffled. During the Musharraf regime, deputy commissioners, assistant commissioners and magistrates were removed and powers were transferred to chief secretaries and provincial governments.

Husain said these interventions had served to kill the efficiency and effectiveness of civil services in Pakistan and the rest was destroyed because of the absence of quality training and performance evaluation. Everyone who entered in civil services at grade 17 was automatically promoted to the next grade and reached the maximum grade by the time they retired. “There was virtually no system of performance evaluation in the civil services.”

He said he had recently proposed civil services reforms to the government after rigorous research of two years. He proposed that the perks and promotion of the civil servants should be linked with their performance and that they should be offered market-based compensation. “The reforms could not be implemented for obvious reasons.”

Columnist and civil servant Yasir Pirzada lamented that the civil services had lost its glory. “It is now in the hands of mediocre officers whose performance was barely average. Yet it is astounding how they all have managed to get outstanding ACRs from their seniors…it is clearly because of the absence of a proper evaluations system.”

He said it was unfortunate that a large proportion of civil servants tended to resign from their positions in the early years and find work in the private sector at better salary packages. He stressed that the government should rationalise compensation packages of civil servants and introduce a performance evaluation system.

The session was moderated by Hussain Nadim from the University of Sydney.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 4^th,  2016.