LAHORE, Oct 27: “Almost all government ministers have proved to be extremely incompetent in addressing issues and the bureaucracy assisting these ministers is also incapable of solving people's problems. Pakistan is passing through a gigantic governance crisis.”

This was one of the unanimous recommendations finalised at the two-day international conference on “Pakistan: Challenges to Democracy, Governance and National Unity” organised by Punjab University's Pakistan Study Centre and Department of History.

Besides conference organiser Prof Dr S Qalb-i-Abid and secretary Prof Dr Massarrat Abid, eminent scholars of Pakistan Studies Stephen McDowell from the USA; Tatiana Oranskaia from the University of Hamburg; Jean-Luc Racine and Michel Boivin from France; Vyacheslave Y. Belokrentsky and Vladimir Sotnikov from Russia; Ihsan Yilmaz, Necdet Tosun and Salim Cevik from Turkey and Hassan Askari Rizvi, Rasool Bukhsh Rais, Muhammad Waseem, Sajjad Naseer and Tariq Rahman from Pakistan presented their ideas at the two-day conference. In all, 40 scholars from the US, Germany, France, Russia, Sweden, Turkey and Pakistan presented their research papers at seven sessions in the conference.

The conference laid stress on the need to appoint eligible people on merit so that they can deal with problems. Besides, it said a new culture of accountability should be projected in Pakistan.

The speakers recommended that Pakistan needed to apply austerity measures to cut down its budget deficit and restructure its economy as a whole. Citing examples, the speakers said during the last eight months more than hundred meetings had been arranged at the highest level to address the debt crises in Europe. The Untied States Senate, House of Representatives and the Obama administration arranged a number of high level meetings and formed various committees of experts to reduce their budget deficit. As many as 13 trillion dollars austerity measures were recommended to be adopted by the US administration. On the contrary, the Pakistani government has done nothing to address the economic crisis, said the speakers.

As the youth makes almost 70 per cent of the total Pakistani population, the conference forcefully recommended that a comprehensive plan for job creation must be worked out by the government to stop brain drain. It suggested that a new tax system should be devised and those who could afford to pay must pay the taxes. The agriculture sector should be brought in the tax system.

The speakers said corruption had increased in Pakistan manifold and the country might land in further economic turmoil leading to its failure if measures were not taken to check corruption. Public sector corporations like Pakistan Railways, PIA and Pakistan Steel Mills must come on top of the government agenda.

The speakers said field data showed that supporters of the Taliban had convinced the young minds that the present judicial system in Pakistan had failed. They made the youth believe that the Taliban form of justice was quick, whereas the Pakistani system was slow and tiresome. Judiciary's inactiveness promoted extremism in Pakistan, the speakers observed.

The conference recommended that security issues should be addressed on priority because investment and economic progress depended on peaceful atmosphere.

The conference recommended allocation of at least four per cent of the GDP for education. It stressed the need to build big and small dams to solve the energy problem.

The speakers recommended that the government should establish think-tanks of Pakistani scholars, academics and experts to make recommendations on key issues. They recommended that the European Union model should be adopted to establish trade and cultural relations among South Asian countries.