The plan includes a cost-cutting component worth Rs30 billion and reforms that would generate Rs50 billion per annum, said PMSA president Rai Mansoor Nasir.
The Punjab government announced on Sunday that it was cutting 550 posts in the province to curb non-development expenditure. It said the “rightsizing” measure would save Rs6.1 billion a year.
The PMSA’s cost-cutting plan targets perks. Nasir said civil servants should get no more than one official car. At present, he said, District Management Group (DMG) officers got between three and eight cars for official use.
He said all official vehicles should be converted to run on compressed natural gas, which would save millions of rupees spent on fuel each day.
Nasir said that official residences should be less luxurious. “The official residences are over acres. We recommend that the maximum size of an official house should be one kanal. The extra land should be sold or used for some other purpose,” he said.
He said the allowance for the repair of these residences must be curtailed. He claimed that a DMG officer had spent Rs8.8 million on the repair of his official residence in 2010.
Nasir said that the practice of giving officers special wage packages disguised as project allowances must be abolished. Officers’ medical allowances should be curbed, he said. “The medical bills run into millions in the case of DMG officers,” he said.He said the utilities allowance given to provincial secretaries at Rs30,000 per month should be withdrawn because it was “discriminatory” and made the other officers jealous.
He suggested that foreign trips by senior officers be kept to a minimum. Officers with dual nationality should be banned or dismissed from government service, he said. He did not explain how this would save money. Nasir said the government should minimise transfers, since each one lost money in the form of transfer grants. It should also stop posting junior officers to senior seats, he said, as this gave the junior officers the salaries and perks of higher grades. He said all officers on special duty (OSDs) from the federal government must be returned to the Centre. “Why should the Punjab government pay them when they are not doing any work? Even the rules framed by the DMG make it illegal for OSDs in BS-22 to stay in Punjab.”
Nasir said the provincial government sends provincial civil servants for training to the National Institute of Public Administration at a cost of Rs650,000 per officer. The province could save millions by sending them instead to the Management and Professional Development Department. By developing the MPDD, it could start training officers from other provinces and generate an income from this.
He said commissioners, district coordination officers and other field officers should seek donations for health and education projects. “Each year religious institutions get billions of rupees in charity. Why can’t this be channelled into the health and education sectors?”
He said over 60 federal officers not in the All Pakistan Unified Groups should be sent back to the federal government.
Revenue Dept reforms
Nasir said that a PMSA committee had proposed a set of Revenue Department reforms to the Punjab government in 2008 and 2009 which would double the revenue generated by the province.
These reforms would curtail various corrupt practices, he said. For example, the government should draw up a schedule of property prices in rural areas, like it does in urban areas, to prevent pilferage
Nasir described the government austerity plan as “the brain child of DMG officers” which would block the already delayed promotions of provincial civil servants. He said the government’s claim that the job cuts would save Rs6.1 was “totally false”.
He said: “Even if officers are recalled from the field and placed at the disposal of the Services and General Administration Department, they will still be getting salaries so where are these savings coming from?”
Published in The Express Tribune, January 27th, 2011.
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