Can a critical change happen in a country where the ruling elite stash their ‘loot’ in foreign lands?
KARACHI: There must be something uniquely strange about ordinary Pakistanis. They voluntarily choose to park their savings at National Saving Centres instead of the tax-free Panama and other offshore havens. My research spread over many years and hundreds of interviews suggests some startling hitherto undiscovered benefits of National Savings Schemes.
First, there are huge medical benefits surreptitiously built into the nature of National Savings Schemes. They keep senior citizens physically active and mentally alert, anxiously awaiting their due date for the collection of monthly profits. The schemes create a pastime for millions who would otherwise die of idleness, boredom and nothing to look forward to. The Nationals Savings Schemes operate hand-in-glove with our transport industry, generating millions of completely avoidable bus, car and rickshaw trips every month. A compulsory monthly outing is surely a great healer for the mind and body. The saving centres also act like clubs and community centres, providing a monthly opportunity for people to socialise and talk to others who also suffer from similar ailments. This takes away the jibe from hours of torturous waiting as government clerks juggle huge registers and punch dusty calculators.
Bureaucrats of Pakistan, who often keep their own money abroad, have intentionally kept this system unchanged for the past 70 years. There would be no Grade 20 and 21 officials in National Savings if the 3,377 employees and 367 branches were not engaged in dealing with millions of begging and pleading customers. These officials are, indeed, the most shameful and reprehensible face of Pakistan. For the past three decades, the National Savings Organisation has been hoodwinking the people of Pakistan by making false promises of its planned computerisation. All they needed was to ask each customer to specify a bank and an account number into which the profits could be automatically credited every month. Customers could receive an auto-generated SMS to confirm the transaction. Can a critical change happen in a country where the ruling elite stash their ‘loot’ in foreign lands while ordinary citizens undergo agonising processes to receive monthly profits on their lifetime savings, which are often their only subsistence?
Naeem Sadiq
Published in The Express Tribune, September 3rd, 2016.
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