Digitally 'sapped'

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Circa 1925: The undivided Indian subcontinent ruled by the British, consisted of approximately 2 million government employees and about 20 million pensioners. The number of ghost employees and ghost pensioners was zero and no one fraudulently received salary or pension from two different government departments. Now fast forward by a century, 2025 to be exact, and focus on just two government departments.

The Karachi Development Authority's recent audit revealed that Rs667 million or 30% of KDA's total pension fund of Rs2.21 billion was fraudulently received by some 500 bogus pensioners. Another 2024 report, on Karachi Municipal Corporation, uncovered approximately 950 ghost employees, besides another 200 individuals drawing salaries from two public sector organisations simultaneously. The two examples are just the tip of an iceberg in an ocean of 'ghosts'.

How does Pakistan reform its bizarre 'multiple salary and ghost pensioner' crisis? The KMC's proud announcement of purchasing very expensive Enterprise software from a global company for their payroll processing was received with an aura of disbelief and astonishment — akin to shooting a sparrow with a missile. It was deeply disappointing to see Pakistan missing an excellent opportunity, especially when hundreds of our own IT companies are developing and exporting (around $4 billion this year) enterprise-level HR systems. We also have organisations like Ignite for developing incubation centres and universities that have produced a steady stream of IT professionals for the past many decades.

Global enterprise-level software are known as expensive solutions due to their upfront payment, implementation cost, change request and upkeep perspective. They take a huge toll on our limited foreign exchange and make us reach out to respective consultants for every small change. They have a long implementation period and in many cases the requirements get dated by the time the software is rolled out.

Both the cost and ease of use are some of the key factors for selecting software. Typically, a system such as SAP, would initially cost over $100,000 (depending upon the number of employees), followed by 10-15% yearly payment for upkeep. Why would a single government department of a developing country choose such an astronomically expensive option? Would thousands of other government departments be also competing with each other in pursuit of similar high-cost imported solutions?

Pakistan is digitally 'sapped' and asphyxiated. It cries out for urgent and radical citizen-centric digital reforms — that deliver services to citizens, bring efficiencies in government operations and plug wastages in the national exchequer. We could learn from excellent digital services established by Uzbekistan, where a single unified interactive portal delivers all services offered by the state, where no one ever submits photocopies and affidavits, where no one needs to visit government offices and where no one can draw ghost pension for even a single day, as all births and deaths are officially registered on the same day.

Pakistan too can step forward to deconstruct and reform its century-old system of governance-by-photocopies. It can engage its youth, its academia and its excellent software houses to provide indigenous low-cost solutions. These could be standardised across the country, integrated with each other and linked to NADRA. This would enable us to eliminate the existing chaos where an individual can simultaneously (and easily) be receiving salary or pension from six different municipalities of Pakistan.

A well-integrated system will not just make all ghost salaries and double pensions a tale of the past but will also instantaneously highlight numerous other shortcomings. The 60% neglected workforce that is not paid the minimum wage, the 95% workers who are cruelly deprived of their EOBI and thousands who draw salaries without ever having done a single day's work are just a few of such regularly committed malpractices. Pakistan and its ordinary people must no longer suffer a life of misery and runarounds, simply because our leaders are unable to imagine how digital technology can lift Pakistan out of its self-created poverty and affliction.