Interested parties have been given a two-week deadline to submit their applications.
ISLAMABAD: The government has advertised for the services of seven dynamic federal secretaries from the private sector to head economic ministries including finance and energy.
The move shows that the bureaucracy lacks the courage and knowledge to run the country effectively. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has also formed a ministerial committee to finalize the new nominees for the appointment of Grade 22 bureaucrats as executive directors at the World Bank in Washington and the Asian Development Bank in Manila.
Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar will head the committee. An advertisement was published in the press late last week and said that the government has invited applications from dynamic and experienced professionals for the roles of Principal Accounting Officers (PAOs), Technical Advisors and Heads of Institutions in key economic sectors.
Interested persons have been given a deadline of two weeks to submit their applications. Although the names of the divisions were not mentioned in the advertisement, the qualification criteria and job details posted on the Establishment Division website indicate that the government is going to hire seven federal secretaries from the private sector to run the economic ministries.
These ministries are Finance Division, Petroleum Division, Power Division, Planning Division, Industries and Production Division, National Food Security Division and Vocational Education and Training. These divisions are currently headed by officers of the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS). The Finance Secretary is Imdadullah Bosal, Momin Agha is Petroleum Secretary, Fakhr Alam Irfan is serving as Power Secretary, Owais Manzoor Soomro is Planning Secretary, Saif Anjum is Industries Secretary and Waseem Ajmal Chaudhry is National Food Security Secretary.
When contacted, Minister for Economic Affairs and Establishment Ahad Khan Cheema said that no specific posts have been finalised yet and the government wants to create a pool of experts for key posts, especially for the economic ministries. Pakistan’s economic ministries are mostly run by PAS officers and it is criticized that many of these officers do not have the necessary experience to understand the complexity of these economic matters.
There is also a perception that a private sector person with no public sector experience cannot run these ministries effectively. The nature of the work is such that sometimes secretaries have to lobby the prime minister for decisions, especially in cases where the ministers concerned are not very effective.
Another challenge facing bureaucrats is that their ministers sometimes lack the understanding or courage to take the right decisions. Federal secretaries are often seen replacing federal ministers. Sometimes bureaucrats do not even get support from the Prime Minister’s Office. The government recently replaced the education secretary despite his exceptional work in the field of public sector education.
Commenting on the advertisement, former Secretary to the Prime Minister and former Minister for Privatization Fawad Hassan Fawad said, “A bad craftsman quarrels with his own tools.” Fawad Hassan Fawad said that this proposal will not work, public sector finance is a different field, an economy that runs on constant charity and begging, these people do not understand the constraints of the public sector and the heavy responsibility of managing the cash flow of a constantly deficit economy.
It may be recalled that a year ago, the government had hired the services of Secretary Information Technology from the private sector. The government has not yet released any performance report on the work of the IT sector to determine whether the experiment was successful or not. Now the government intends to sign a “performance-based contract” with these selected individuals for two years.
The advertisement states that the grade and remuneration of the selected individual will be determined as per government rules and will be in line with competitive market rates. This will include allowances and incentives applicable to the position. According to the Establishment Division, candidates should have at least 20 years of relevant post-qualification experience and their maximum age at the time of appointment should be 60 years, which can be relaxed in exceptional cases.
The website of the Establishment Division shows that the government has invited applications for the services of a PAO for the financial sector. On the other hand, it is reported that the Prime Minister has also constituted a ministerial committee to consider eligible and suitable BS-22 officers for the posts of Executive Director of the World Bank and Executive Director of the Asian Development Bank.
These posts have fallen vacant after the Executive Director of Pakistan at the World Bank, Dr. Tauqir Shah, was made the Prime Minister’s Advisor. Similarly, the tenure of the current Executive Director of the Asian Development Bank, Noor Ahmed, ended last week.
Some retired bureaucrats were also in the running for the post, but have now been excluded from the selection process. According to sources, the top contenders include Finance Secretary Imdadullah Bosal, Economic Affairs Secretary Dr. Kazim Niaz, and Interior Secretary Khurram Agha.
