THE PTI never had a solid plan for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and have spent the first few months of its new government in trying to figure out a roadmap for its government in the province.

I have been a part of some of the working groups. I have witnessed in these meetings the friction between the bureaucracy and elected representatives. I was surprised to see that the elected representatives of the PTI have not figured it out how to overcome this friction.

The PTI leaders should realise that the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are different from the people of Punjab. I realised this difference when one of my dear friends, a bank manager in Peshawar, opted for a transfer to Lahore. After two years I met my friend and asked him about the difference between working in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.He said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has smaller cities where people know each other, while in Punjab there are bigger cities where mostly people do not know each other. That is the reason why work in Punjab is more professional, while working in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa one feels like working with friends and relatives.

My friend said that as bank manager he once scolded his subordinate in Peshawar for neglecting his duties. The same evening the subordinate visited my friend’s home along with some elders who asked my friend, like in a jirga, to be nicer and lenient with the subordinate.

Since Pakhtun culture dictates that one has to follow the instructions of the elder, my friend, therefore, had to be lenient with his subordinate, which affected his and the bank’s work. But in Lahore, my friend says, managers demand better performance from all their subordinates, who all produce high quality work to avoid being criticised by their managers.

Similarly, there is a huge difference in the working of the chief ministers of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. At a recent meeting held to improve technical education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa I was shocked to find from a German consultant that the Punjab chief minister decided on the technical project within a few hours, while his industrial secretary was able to provide 20 companies for internship training and his finance manager was able to allot Rs1 billion for this project. The Punjab chief minister forced the German consultants to work faster and complete the said project within six months. This was done quickly because the Punjab chief minister has a dedicated private expert team to study all the projects and give him the best options to tackle the projects. The team had already studied the technical education sector and agreed to an action plan with the chief minister.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the chief minister asked the local bureaucracy to give him a plan on how to improve technical education. Since the bureaucracy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has not been able to improve any department or work in the past five years, it is once again unable to do anything positive or effective.

If the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa bureaucracy had any inkling of doing professional work, it would have managed to execute these projects without the chief minister’s intervention.

I advise the PTI leaders to have a dedicated team of planners. Work plans can then be implemented by the bureaucracy. Most importantly, the PTI needs to enhance professionalism of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa bureaucracy. The bureaucrats should be given security by disallowing elected representatives to transfer, hire or change officials in their respective departments.

SHAHRYAR BASEER Peshawar