October 01, 2006	Sunday	Ramazan 7, 1427

KARACHI, Sept 30: Sindh and Balochistan are relatively less densely populated provinces of Pakistan than Punjab and the NWFP. These provinces have a higher density of government servants and are comparatively badly managed with more illiterates. They are by and large financially insolvent and show high crime rate.

A recent World Bank study has worked out a ratio of 1.85 government servants for every 100 persons in Balochistan and 1.29 for every 100 persons in Sindh. In contrast, there is a ratio of 1.21 government servants for 100 persons in NWFP and only 1.06 in Punjab, the most populated province of the country.

Sindh boasts of showing the highest-ever growth of 60.5 per cent in government employees during 1988 to the year 2000, when elected and caretaker governments replaced each other in quick successions.

In 1988 the headcount of government servants in Sindh was 285,042. This number swelled to 457,494 in the year 2,000. Compare it with only 22.9 per cent growth in Punjab where the number of government employees increased from 722,916 in 1988 to 888,796 in the year 2,000.

The NWFP too showed a high rise of 48 per cent in number of government employees — from 177,196 in 1988 to 262,074 in the year 2,000. In Balochistan, the number of government employees increased from 98,942 in 1998 to 128,132 — a rise of 29.5 per cent.

“In Sindh and Balochistan, the strategy adopted by Islamabad was to accommodate as many locals in the government jobs as possible in 1988 and after when the quasi-elected governments replaced military handpicked team of politicians,” a retired bureaucrat in Karachi explained.

He said that late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto adopted the same policy in 1972 and afterwards. “Just recall, how strong was the “Jiye Sindh” current in late sixties and how it was mellowed down in early seventies,” he said.

His other explanation for expansion in bureaucracy in Sindh and Balochistan, the two southern provinces, which are lagging far behind in economic development, education and infra structure, is that during more than 15 years of One Unit — 1954 to 1970 — people from Punjab literally took over most of the government jobs in police, schools (teachers) and even low positions in districts and tehsils.

“You will not find as many people from outside Punjab province in Lahore Secretariat as you find them in provincial secretariats of Karachi and Quetta and even in police stations, schools and health centres in the villages of Sindh and Balochistan,” he said.

Immediately after taking over the responsibility, Mumtaz Bhutto in Sindh and Sardar Ataullah Mengal in 1972, wanted to repatriate policemen and other government employees back to their home province--Punjab.

Consequently, Mumtaz Bhutto had to be taken out of Sindh and inducted in the federal government and Ataullah Mengal’s government was dismissed to retain the status quo in the two provinces.

Officials say that the government jobs were thrown open much before 1988 in Sindh when Mohammad Khan Junejo was appointed prime minister and Ghous Ali Shah as the chief minister. But late Jam Sadiq Ali, after being appointed in 1990 on dismissal of the Benazir government, used government jobs as a bait to win over PPP supporters in the province.

It was during Jam Sadiq Ali’s tenure that the highest number of persons — both from rural and

urban areas — were given government jobs in Sindh. In the finance department, the number of newly recruited officers of grade 16 and 17 increased so much in 1990 and 1991 that there were no chairs and desks available to accommodate them.

Education remains the most sought-after department for employment by the job seekers from the lower middle class groups in rural and semi-urban areas of Sindh. It provides the opportunity to get recruited, get monthly salary and enjoy benefits without attending the schools.

At one time there were as many as more than 6,000 schools without teachers. The World Bank report says the number of employees in Education department increased from 49,600 to 101,000—-almost 104 per cent.

The quasi-elected and handpicked caretakers did focus on social sectors after 1988 and invested heavily in bricks and mortars and increased the number of primary schools by 160 per cent during 1988 and 2,000. In this period the national average of rise in primary schools was 25 per cent.

Those, who watch the affairs of Sindh, say that literacy in terms of schools enrolment, students in secondary and higher secondary, professional, technical and vocational institutes, particularly in the rural and semi-urban areas of province is just dismal and pathetic.

“It may appear as a puzzle that Sindh succeeded in building so many new schools, and hospitals, hiring the maximum number of civil servants and spending billions of rupees, and yet has very little to show in terms of improved development outcomes,” is the candid observation of the World Bank’s report that asks a question--why?

The report then answers, “When the governance is weak, the increased investment goes into bottomless pit, benefiting no one, except the corrupt officials and the private contractors.”

The report suggests that the Sindh government should improve its governance with increase in the investment and “adopt a strategy that the neighbouring province Punjab is trying to implement in the education sector.”

Not that the World Bank has taken an initiative to point out the problems resulting from a bulging bureaucratic machinery and directionless investment, but there have been politicians and officers in Sindh, who had earlier documented deterioration in administrative and financial management of their province since 1980-90.

“The annual growth rate for establishment cost between 1976 to 1991 was 6.3 per cent,” an official document reveals to point out that this cost increased to 16 per cent a year between 1991 to 1997.

The document blames the directionless initiatives taken by the federal government during the decade of eighties and nineties such as the five point programme, mohalla and mosque schools, Nai Roshni schools, employment generation programmes by government to provide jobs to doctors, engineers and raising of Kutcha police.

“These initiatives resulted into an over-sized establishment rising from 214,000 employees in 1984-85 to 445,830 in 1999-2000.“The bulk of these posts—- nearly 74 per cent—-are in low-skilled levels in basic pay scale grades 1 to 7 and 19 per cent in basic pay scale grades 8 to 16,” the document reveals to illustrate that this expansion has also changed the revenue expenditure pattern in the province bringing general administration from rank IV to rank II downgrading the economic services from rank II to rank IV.

In this backdrop of a bulging bureaucracy and the rising establishment cost, the present political stalemate of the coalition government in Sindh, emanates from differences on new recruitments in thousands in the Sindh government.