PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Caretaker Chief Minister retired Justice Dost Mohammad Khan has said that civil service is key administrative structure for efficient delivery in any state and role of the officers in the development, peace and prosperity of any country cannot be overstated.

Talking to the trainee CSS officers here at Chief Minister’s House, he said that the country was facing multi-faceted challenges. “Efficient delivery to people, elimination of corruption and efficient performance are some of the challenges the new officers have to prepare themselves for,” he added.

The chief minister advised the officers about dedicated and devoted delivery to spur the societal degradation. He said that root causes of the present mess in the society were delayed justice and injustices, inaccessibility of people to services and the overall state of deprivation of the poor.

He asked the new officers to contribute to the institution building to install a just and deliverable system that would certainly lower down the level of challenges the society was faced with.

Terms delayed justice, inaccessibility to services root causes of present mess

The chief minister hoped that the new officers would prepare themselves for the future challenges. He said that they had to provide maximum relief to people that was denied to them constantly by the flawed system of governance. He also talked about the rapid decline of the superior services that he attributed to the wrong culture promoted by successive governments that included corruption and irregularities.

“The young officers have to rise to the occasion, get the required level of training, interact with the people, study the values of the society and study the culture and sub-culture of the people,” said Mr Khan. Equipped with background knowledge, they would certainly succeed in delivering to the people, who suffered because of bad governance, he added.

He said that they had to focus on their capacity building and identify the reasons behind the social evils, weaknesses in the system of delivery and devote themselves to resolve the same and to be committed to the cause of the people.

The chief minister shared with the young officers his experiences of governance in the province. He said that he had a limited mandate under the Constitution.

He said that he was aware of the internal and external enemies posing threat to the security therefore he redesigned the entire security paradigm, made deployment and redeployment of forces and gained reinforcement provided by the federal government that included 68 FC platoon and 500 highly trained police personnel from Azad Jammu and Kashmir that made invincible the overall security shield around the political leadership, their activities and the overall election process.

“These are the factors that led to the peaceful and successful elections in the province,” he added.

Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2018