Who has time to get bored, asks a woman in charge

Starting a career unblemished by tentacles and shenanigans of the political and administrative system, which has created a pervasive perception of being inwardly and outwardly corrupt and inefficient, is what most of the novice bureaucrats aspire for.

Qandeel Fatima Memon, assistant commissioner of the Hyderabad rural taluka, happens to be one such officer who embarked on her career path as an AC under-training in Hyderabad at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

"I find the work exciting," she tells The Express Tribune in an interview. "One finds an array of tasks to do - like providing livable conditions, drainage, anti-encroachment, price checking, handling revenue matters, polio campaign, education and health facilities, ensuring law and order, and a lot more. Who would get time to get bored when there's so much to do?"

Memon joined the Hyderabad district administration in the month of March, 2020, as an AC undertraining and continued on that post for five months amid the Covid-19 emergency. "It was the time when a lot of officers were reluctant to go to their offices and even district administrations faced a shortage of officers," recalls Memon.

"I also could have chosen to stay at home and spent my under-training period without going to the office or [going] for field visits. [But] I chose otherwise because I believed if people aren't being served when they need us the most, what good were we, public servants, for?" Memon, a mother of a baby girl, was expecting another child when she joined her job.

If the coronavirus challenges were not enough for the administration, she recalls the uphill task of providing relief to inflation hit people in the holy month of Ramazan besides enforcement of the standard operating procedures (SOPs) with a greater intensity.

Visiting food and vegetable markets, followed by garments and footwear markets during citizens' Eid shopping sprees, became routine.

"We always tried to deal leniently with traders but there were instances like one in Resham Bazaar where I had to seal four shops after repeated warnings due to non-compliance of SOPs."

Memon, a BS in Actuarial Science and Risk Management with a gold medal and MBA in Finance from Institute of Business Management (IoBM), Karachi, was posted as the AC of the rural taluka in August.

"I run the biggest taluka of Hyderabad district," she says with pride.

In around three months of her posting she resuscitated the moribund bachat [saving] bazaars in the district, organised skill training programs for women, and resolved a six-year-old drainage problem in Tandojam, in addition to taking many other initiatives. "To serve a rural area means getting the chance to uplift lives [of people] by beginning with the very basics," she says.

Yet, despite her authority she finds herself fighting the notion of a woman instructing and directing men working under her. "Working in an office where you are the only woman seems a bit like being the odd one out."

For her the biggest challenge has been encountering junior staffers, who show resistance when it comes to taking orders from a woman. The concept of a woman leading or giving directions to a male dominant staff is what they consider hard to absorb, tells Memon. But she hopes that the situation will change for the good as more and more woman join the Pakistan Administrative Services (PAS).

When she was undergoing the 16-month training at the Lahore academy, 17 of the 38 trainee PAS officers were young woman. "Women are often charged as being less efficient than their male counterparts in field jobs. Although I am new in this field, I have taken it as one of my responsibilities to challenge these notions without even putting any desperate effort."