Pakistan has retained this inherited civil service structure instead of reforming it.
ISLAMABAD: Many ambitious young people in Pakistan aspire to become civil service officers because of the facilities and prestige a bureaucrat enjoys in this country. Civil services should be a responsive institution, but in Pakistan, civil servants are mostly unresponsive and lack the spirit of public service. One of the possible reasons for this attitude that focuses on governing instead of serving may be because of the fact that Pakistan inherited its civil service structure from the British. Our colonial masters had designed the civil services to serve their purpose and not to serve the locals.
Pakistan has retained this inherited civil service structure instead of reforming it. The present system is producing officers with an elitist mindset; they not only keep their distance from the ordinary people but also humiliate the general public. Training programmes of civil servants must be geared towards inculcating the qualities of humility in them which they sorely lack.
Muhammad Zaheer Abbas
Published in The Express Tribune, March 21st, 2013.
