Qualified workforce: Provide better training to civil servants to improve performance

Municipal Training Research Institute should be given more importance.

KARACHI: One of the main reasons for the continuously deteriorating state of civic service delivery in Karachi, as well as the rest of Pakistan, is the unsatisfactory quality and capacity of the human resources available to the public sector utilities.

For a long time in the country, Local Government Training Institutes (LGTIs) have existed at federal, provincial and regional levels and have, in the past, contributed effectively in the institutional strengthening of the local government human resource.

Efforts were initiated in the early 1950s to establish local government and rural development training institutions. The first such institute, the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development, was constituted in Peshawar in 1953. Subsequently, more such institutes were established at provincial and federal levels.

An evaluation of the municipal services sector’s historical development process brings to the forefront a very crucial and decisive reality - the reality that the ‘local government’ has never been accorded a dignified space to function and to realise its place within the national governance construct. Local governments have lacked the capacity to enforce their mandate -appointments and promotions have had little to do with merit and performance.

A cursory assessment of Pakistani LGTIs indicates that the growing irrelevance of their mandate and the resulting decline in performance levels demands an urgent need to take stock of the current situation, to develop an agenda for reforms and then prevent them from disappearing altogether - a definite possibility. Within this context, the LGTI faced with the biggest threat to its existence is the Municipal Training Research Institute (MTRI) based in Karachi.

The case of MTRI

The MTRI was initially set up in 1983 as an entity of the federal government, functioning as an attached department of the now defunct Local Government and Rural Development ministry. Recently, following the application of the 18th Amendment, MTRI has been devolved to the provincial local government department.

While a number of ‘training courses’ have been conducted in MTRI since its inception, both the ‘content’ of the training courses and the relevance and motivation of the participants has usually fallen far below the requirements of the stated mandate.

Generally, the training imparted has remained pretty much the same, with the same training calendar being repeated for the last 15 years. The MTRI has no say in the selection of the participants and nor does it possess any mechanism to monitor impacts of training through any sort of sustained contact with ‘trained’ participants. While some excellent professionals, out of their own commitment and interest, have persisted in their capacity as ‘outsourced’ trainers, the ‘quality’ and ‘relevance’ of the training faculty has generally remained unsatisfactory.

The importance, or the lack thereof, the sector places on the institution is evident from the fact that while the hearing for the airplane hijacking case of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was being heard on the premises of the MTRI and only very recently, the first floor space that houses the main training and research facilities of MTRI has been loaned out to the Sindh Civil Services Academy.

Whatever its weaknesses, the fact remains that such institutions - albeit when working efficiently - are critically needed to train our civic service providers. A meaningful interface with the sector would be crucial in ensuring the relevance of the institution and the acceptance of its training and research outputs. Focus needs to be on upgrading and providing opportunities of exposure for both in-house and selected outsourced facilities.

The writer is an urban planner and runs a non-profit organisation based in Karachi city focusing on urban sustainability issues. He can be reached at [e-mail]

Published in The Express Tribune, March 3^rd, 2014.