Pakistan's major problem is governance: Ishrat

PM’s aide says number of govt institutions to be reduced from 440 to 342

ISLAMABAD: An adviser of the prime minister has described governance as the main problem of Pakistan and announced that number of federal government institutions will be reduced from 440 to 342 under the PTI government plan for institutional reforms.

“Under the reforms programme, key performance goals of the institutions will be assessed and linked with the performance assessment of the federal ministers,” said Adviser to Prime Minister's on Institutional Reforms Dr Ishrat Hussain on Tuesday

He was addressing a session attended by Planning Minister Asad Umar and the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Shabbar Zaidi and representatives of various chambers of commerce and industries.

Hussain said under the reforms programme, special agreements will be signed by ministries, federal secretaries and other senior officers. Civil servants with continuously poor performance for three years will be made to retire, he added.

He revealed that only 6,000 of the 22,000 federal government officials had a proper service structure while others including scientists, doctors, engineers and accountants lacked proper career paths.

“The government is thinking about introducing a performance-based promotion system for the civil servants under which their performance will be tied and assessed on the basis of the performance of their respective ministries,” he said.

The business representatives laid stress on more public-private partnership programmes and lamented that an authority made for the purpose has not been made functional as its rules were yet to be drafted.