Bureaucratic dithering

It is time the government dragged its bureaucrats — kicking and screaming, if necessary — into the 21st century


Editorial February 28, 2015
A view of Dasu Dam site. PHOTO: INP

It is by now cliche to describe civil servants as paper-pushers who love nothing more than to drown even the most urgent conversation on public policy into the minutiae of obscure procedure. But the scale of bureaucratic apathy was brought home to us recently with the revelation that the construction of the Dasu Dam, an urgently needed infrastructure project in the energy sector, was delayed by more than eight months because the civil servants in charge of the project could not get around to opening a bank account. Were this not so outrageous, we would be amused at the utter incompetence of officials at the water and power ministry for taking eight months to do something that takes the average citizen less than a week to accomplish.

The Dasu Dam is going to be a long and complicated project. When it is completed, the $4.3 billion project will add 2,160MW of power generation capacity to the national grid. The 242-metre tall dam will require several thousand people to be relocated and compensated for the loss of their land, a complex negotiation process that can take a long time. In short, this project has several stages, many of which are not going to be easy to accomplish. Our confidence in the government’s ability to get the job done is not too high after its failure to finish what really should not have been much more than half a day’s job for a junior officer. The problem, of course, lies in the fact that, in a bid to curb corruption, we have created arcane rules that govern even the tiniest of movements on behalf of the government, especially when it relates to money. Civil servants need approval from the highest levels to get even routine tasks done. We understand the need for caution, but matters have clearly crossed over into the realm of the ridiculous. In an era where technology has allowed for the automation of audit checks, surely such measures are anachronistic at best. It is time the government dragged its bureaucrats — kicking and screaming, if necessary — into the 21st century.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 1st, 2015.

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