ISLAMABAD, June 8: The government should enforce ‘100 per cent’ merit and adequate regional representation for government reforms to succeed for better civil service structure.
This was stated by Dr Ishrat Hussain, who now heads the National Commission on Government Reforms (NCGR), here on Thursday at a news conference.
“We are very clear on that. There must be enforcement of merit with regional representation to ensure inter-provincial harmony,” he said, adding that the process should be supervised by a neutral panel or selection committee, overseeing the implementation of constitutional quota.
He was asked if the NCGR was also looking at the use of undue discretionary powers by the president and the prime minister in directly inducting high-profile government jobs bypassing the prescribed selection process and recommendations of the Federal Public Service Commission.
He said independent panels were selecting faculty members in universities and results were “very encouraging”.
He said he believed that the same principle should also be applied to civil service posts. He said: “We are following double standards. Intellectual honesty must be restored,” adding that it would taken some time.
When he was asked how the government wanted to implement the NCGR decisions and the steering committee led by the president when only relevant constitutional forums like Council of Common Interest (CCI or the National Economic Council (NEC) could take decisions on such matters under the constitution, Mr Hussain said that the NCGR and the six-member steering committee would be given proper legal cover.
He said under the law, the NCGR would have a permanent status for continually implementing the reforms process through an institutional set up.
He said that the commission’s members and chairman should have a limited tenure.
Dr Hussain also agreed to look into the performance of 49 cantonment boards as they affected a lot of people and said the cantonments were not ‘No-Go’ areas for the commission.
He said the composition of the commission was now complete. He said the 11-member commission would be led by him.
Six part-time independent members, including Dr Shams Qasim Lakha of the Aga Khan Foundation, former agriculture minister Shafqat Ali Jamote, former health minister Dr Abdul Malik Kasi, former Punjab finance minister Dr Shahid Hafeez Kardar, chairman of Shell Pakistan Farooq Rehmatullah and former inspector-general police Asad Jehangir.
Three ex-officio members would include cabinet secretary Ejaz Rahim, establishment secretary Tariq Bukhari and secretary finance Tanvir Ali Agha.
He said instead of creating a new body, the civil service reforms unit, led by Maj-Gen Asif Bukhari, had been merged with the NCGR to provide secretariat support. Mr Bukhari, he said, would no longer hold the title of director-general of the CSRU but continue as member/secretary of the NCGR.
He said NCGR’s decisions would be presented before the steering committee co-chaired by the president and the prime minister and represented by four chief ministers so that its decisions had top political support for quick implementation. Implementation, he said, had been the real problem in Pakistan.
He said the commission had been assigned tasked with providing hassle-free services to people besides increasing civil servants’ efficiency, honesty and motivation.
He said priority areas for reforms included education, health care, police, revenue departments, land records and revision of rules of business.
He said there was a dichotomy between the civil servants’ discretionary powers and reward and punishment structure, adding that the commission would have to find ways to make the provincial, federal and local governments more efficient.
He said the committee would focus on implementation instead of producing voluminous reports.
Rules of business, he said, would also be changed to enhance the discretionary powers of the principal accounting officers in financial matters, adding that they (principal accounting officers) would also be equally held accountable.
He said the commission was working on 22 reports on civil service reform already already with the government, adding that it would formulate proposals and start consultation with the stakeholders, including the common man, adding that revised proposals would be forwarded to the steering committee for decisions and implementation.
He said the steering committee would then assign provincial governments and various agencies specific targets and an implementation roadmap, adding that they would have to explain if they failed to implement their objectives.
