Understaffed

An annual report from the Establishment Division has shown that there may be as many as 81,479 vacant posts in the federal government, or around 12.29% of all posts, across the country. In the autonomous bodies and corporations of the federal government, this shortfall rises to 115,909, or around 22.5% of the vacant posts in that sector. The most vacancies were in the attached or subordinate departments of various ministries where the existing strength was 558,943 and where there were some 77,028 positions unassigned. In terms of share of employees, Punjab has the most employees at 47.66%. K-P enjoys a 26% share in federal government jobs even though population-wise it comes out to just 14.69% of the total population. Sindh has a 14.01% share of jobs with the Division, with the balance tilted in favour of rural centres of the province. Balochistan, AJK, and G-B make up the rest.

While these numbers have fluctuated over the past decade, the shortfall in employees reflects the government’s failure to adequately fill slots. The problems with the civil services exams are well documented and can often be found on these pages. The most obvious downside of not being fully staffed is that government departments cannot fulfil their functions optimally. And when they fail to do so, things slip through the gaps. Overworked employees try to shirk as much work as they possibly can in order to deal with their increased workloads. But the government, which has already told the Cabinet Division that it can forget about raises this year owing to a paucity of funds, is hard-pressed to fill these posts. Perhaps the government may be able to find at least a partial panacea in the tilt to digital where some functions can either be automated or digitised with the help of technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain – not only to increase efficiency but also to help lower overall staffing requirements. 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2020.

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