Caretaker govt having its way with bureaucracy

In the past month, there has been a mass reshuffle in the ranks of police, civil officers

LAHORE:

While it is not uncommon for an elected government to shuffle the bureaucracy as per its liking, regardless of how much it crumbles morale, the caretaker government in Punjab has been doing the same since it came into office.

The caretaker Chief Minister, Mohsin Naqvi, led government has seemingly broken all past records of transfers and appointments in the bureaucracy during the past month. As per records obtained by The Express Tribune, as many as 10,000 officers have been transferred in the province including Police Clerks, Superintendents, Deputy Superintendents, District Police Officers, Regional Police Officers, Inspector General (IG); and civil officers including Patwaris, Naib Tehsildars, Assistant Commissioners, Deputy Commissioners, and departmental Secretaries.

Furthermore, the records indicate that more than 100 officers have been expelled from the province; and 67 officers from different parts of the country and on foreign assignments have been brought to Punjab. Moreover, some 300 officers who had been sidelined during the former chief minister Usman Buzdar era but were a part of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) government, from 2008-2018, have also been given important portfolios in the province.

Commenting on the caretaker government’s mass bureaucratic reshuffling, former chief secretary of Punjab, Yousaf Naseem Khokhar, opined that while it was the prerogative of any government, be it political or caretaker, no one seemed to care about the adverse consequences. “When governments bring their preferred officers, it demoralises the entire bureaucracy.”

Agreeing with Khokhar, former IG Punjab, Haji Habib ur Rahman, said that transfers without giving any regard to merit ruins efficiency in the bureaucracy. “For instance if you shuffle police officers on the basis of likes and dislikes, the entire force will stop putting in the hard work. Consequently, the crime rate will go up,” explained Rahman. The former IG was of the view that it was unfortunate that the tenure policy was not implemented and officers were being moved around like pawns on a chessboard.

When asked about the caretaker government bringing in officers from the PML-N’s tenure back to Punjab, Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan, the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister, said that it was the discretion of the caretaker setup. “If some of the officers in the party’s 10 year tenure did good work then what is wrong with the caretaker government bringing them back?” However, Khan clarified that the PML-N had nothing to do with the transfers and further said that these were “petty issues.”

Mehmood-ur-Rasheed, the former provincial minister from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), disagrees. “This is not a petty issue as the caretaker government wants to use these officers to rig the election against the PTI,” he alleged, adding that they have taken the issue to the courts and were hopeful of getting justice. “We will make sure that officers who are being used as pawns by the PML-N against the PTI are held accountable once we are back in power,” said Rasheed while talking to The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2023.