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| August 22, 2005 | Monday | Rajab 16, 1426 |
World Bank wants a say in placement of bureaucrats
ISLAMABAD, Aug 21: The World Bank seeks a say in placement of bureaucrats, who are due next month after getting training abroad, Dawn has learnt. The first batch of 125 bureaucrats were sent abroad for training under the World Bank-funded Public Sector Capacity Building programme.
The Bank’s country office has approached the Establishment Division to work out their placement through mutual consultation, sources told Dawn.
But, apprehensions that whether the $22 million professional development component of the programme would yield the desired results are being expressed in the backdrop of the fact that the government rushed with the use of the World Bank loan without determining its training requirements.
Complaints about the selection procedure are quite common. The government has yet to explain why the number of officers to be sent abroad for training annually was cut down from 125 to 75.
So far, the grant is being utilized for capacity building of the officials in the areas of their own choice, irrespective to the specific needs of various government departments.
The qualified officials, therefore, may claim personal accomplishment, but their added qualification is of no use for their departments concerned or the country.
The professional development component of the project was primarily for addressing the capacity and technical skills gap in the civil service. The two projects — Executive Development Programme (EDP) and Professional Development Programme (PDEV) — were initiated for the capacity building of federal and provincial civil service and ex-cadre officers. It is being argued in the bureaucracy circles that the basic premise to obtain a loan/credit from World Bank was the desperation to have skill enhancement of civil servants in view of their steadily declining technical competence and inferior quality of the entry level officers in civil service.
However, in the absence of training need assessment, whereby the government should identify what kind of skill sets are required in a changing scenario, the loan will yet again go waste.
Starting point for any such exercise should have been to assess the role of state in country’s development. Now that we have regulatory mechanisms coming in, as well as the devolution aspect and a major shift to governance, the government should have managed the programme from a futuristic perspective.
Apart from lack of planning, the project is full of absurdities that are hindering its effective utilization. To quote an example, for this year, the professional development programme advertisement seeking applications was published in April-May 2005 and the whole short listing process consumed another two months after which the candidates were asked to secure admissions in various universities. But, no one among the planners and executers of this project bothered to realize that admissions to the US universities for 2005 had already closed in December 2004. In this way the chances of successful candidates in getting admission in the best institutions were eliminated.
There is another aspect of linking courses to universities. For example if one wanted to go for a masters degree in public administration, he/she could only apply to Harvard (USA), Australia National University (ANU) and Cranfield (UK). Now because of the late advertisement nobody could apply to Harvard, whereas Cranfield did not actually offer public administration, which left the applicants with the only choice of applying to ANU.
Why is this restriction? Aren’t there any other reputable institutions, where our officers could have got better training?
Similarly, MBA was an advertised field. However, once admissions were secured by candidates, the government abruptly dropped the subject at the eleventh hour.
These are just of the few glaring examples of weaknesses in the programme warranting a revision of strategy, as we still have another four years in this project left with us and we can probably make out a better deal than just pursuing it in a blind-folded manner.
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