Karachi, Pakistan: An internationally acclaimed economist Dr Kaiser Bengali in his press conference held on September 2, 2024, at Karachi Press Club, shared techniques with the public about how the superclass rules Pakistan.
Dr. Bengali was a member of the High-Powered Committee for Rightsizing constituted by Prime Minister Mian Shehbaz Sharif but Bengali resigned from the Committee, indicating that he cannot be part of a futile exercise because powerful individuals and groups within the system are not ready to allow anybody to get hold of them and they are so powerful that the third committee on rightsizing faced the same fate that previous two committees met for same purpose.
Kaiser Bengali indicates how the Superclass rules Pakistan and is not ready to cut its perks and privileges
Bengali indirectly indicated that the powerful clan of federal bureaucrats, mostly from the Pakistan Administrative Service (previously known as District Management Group) are not ready for the ‘rightsizing’ of the bureaucracy, and two committees in the past also failed to stand against this powerful clan when Hafeez Pasha and Dr Ishrat Hussain failed to realize their reports they wrote on rightsizing of administrative structure in the country. Dr Kaiser Bengali is the third world-acclaimed economist who indicates that Pakistan cannot run as it has been nowadays while the superclass is not ready to lose grip on economic resources and the country is working to take care of the luxurious lives of top bureaucrats of the country.
Entire burden of “rightsizing” is being imposed on the lower income strata of society
Dr Pasha and Dr Ishrat had almost the same findings but they did not share them with the public as Dr. Bengali did who held a press conference in Karachi Press Club and categorically said that instead of rightsizing of expensive bureaucracy at the secretary, the additional secretary, managing director, and director general, the government is laying off government officials from BS-1 to BS-16. He stated that he was not in favor of the abolishment of 150,000 government jobs from BS-1 to 16 and the privatization of the Utility Stores Corporation because the entire burden of “rightsizing” is being transferred to the lower-income strata of society.
Government can save 30 billion rupees by reducing BPS 20 to 22 positions but nobody can dare to touch this superclass
He stated that he saw the lack of the government’s commitment to reduce expenditures therefore he decided to resign from the rightsizing committee because he did not want to be a part of just a ‘public relations’ activity of the government having no real commitment to bail the country out from economic disaster.
“I was immensely disappointed to see that of the 70 government organizations reviewed the committee recommended privatizing 17 commercial entities and retaining 52 government organizations but the government is closing down only one,” commented Dr Bengali. He believes that the entire burden of “rightsizing” is being imposed on the lower income strata of society and that there was no mention of any of the high-cost Secretary, Additional Secretary, Joint Secretary, director-general, etc. positions that would not be eliminated by the government. He is of the view that government can save 30 billion rupees by reducing BPS 20 to 22 positions but nobody can dare to touch this superclass of the country. He thinks that the economy has already collapsed and the country cannot be run without more loans but ‘there was no realization in Islamabad about such state of affairs’. He shared with the public that ‘certain individuals were ‘resisting’ the ending of institutions/departments for their “vested interests.”
The announcement of ‘rightsizing’ had been a media management tool because nothing was done tangible after having honest reports for ‘rightsizing’
Bengali expressed his disappointment over the government’s lack of interest in reducing expenses although 17 divisions of federal bureaucracy do not align with the Constitution and should be shut down.
If researchers review the observations of Dr Ishrat Husain, Dr. Pasha, and Dr Bengali over the issue of restructuring of administrative building of Pakistan, one can instantly understand that the desires of political governments succumbed to civil bureaucrats who are not ready to even loosen their grip on their medical bills and the entire burden goes to common man who has no option just to keep injecting hard-earned money in public exchequer to enable the state to pay for high salaried class’s requirements. Moreover, it also becomes crystal clear that the announcement of ‘rightsizing’ had been a buzzword and media management tool for all previous governments because nothing was done tangible after having honest reports for ‘rightsizing’.
According to one of the articles by Dr. Ishrat Husain titled “3.2 million government employees: Is the bureaucracy too big?” (published in January 2022), the government employs 3.2 million. Total government expenditure is around 22% of GDP. The strength of government employees in 2009-10 was 2.7 million—federal 0.9 million and provinces 1.8 million. In absolute terms, there has been an addition of 0.4 million over a decade – almost all of it in the provincial governments, which now have 2.2 million employees, or 70% of the total – up slightly from 66% a decade ago. He writes that the wage bill of the four provincial governments was Rs. 350 billion in 2009-10 and has escalated more than four times by 2019-20.
The federal wage bill multiplied 2.9 times during the decade, while the strength, which had been on a declining path until 2016, remained unchanged at one million. In 2016/17, the federal government added 116,000 new employees, the majority of whom were in lower-level positions. For the first time since then, there has been a reduction in the number of employees in 2019/20 as a result of the restructuring of the federal government but this reduction is only in lower grades.
Reports of Dr. Pasha and Dr. Ishrat and observations of Dr. Bengali help to mitigate a cliché that the Army officers are a burden over taxpayers and research indicates that a deliberate move from politicians and civil bureaucracy redirects criticism of the failure of the government toward Pakistan Army
Dr. Ishrat Husain believes that from a citizen’s, perspective, the critical question is what functions these 3.2 million employees perform in the delivery of basic public goods and services for which they are paid.
‘Bureaucratic Reform’ research published in 2023 by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) is a useful document to understand the currents and undercurrents of rightsizing issues in Pakistan. The report indicates that every initiative to fix administrative costs in Pakistan further centralized power rather than empowering local communities and officials which could inform bottom-up approaches to reform of public service provision and bureaucratic performance. The 18th Amendment (passed in 2010) also failed to slice the federal bureaucracy burden on the center but rather enhanced it as bureaucratic and political elites sought to game them to centralize power in their own hands. For example, bureaucratic resistance led to slow progress in the dissolution of federal ministries and the creation of provincial ones because a lack of capacity within the Provincial Civil Services meant that the devolved provincial departments ended up – yet again – in the hands of elite, federal (PAS) bureaucrats. The onus to bring about reform to align the distribution of power with decentralized decision-making was on politicians and elite bureaucrats who stood to lose significant power if reforms were introduced, the 18th Amendment has only reinforced the centralization of bureaucratic policy, practice, and appointments.
A report by the DND News Agency indicates that the privilege of a civil bureaucrat of BS-17 is ‘unimaginable’ for an officer of military bureaucracy equal to BS-17
Another report of PIDE explains that civil servants are earning 20% more than their counterparts in the private sector and the bureaucracy was availing huge benefits without properly disclosing their pay slips, which in the case of top grade-22 are 10 times more than the average basic salary of the officer.
Reports of Dr. Pasha and Dr. Ishrat and observations of Dr. Bengali help to mitigate a cliché that the Army officers are a burden over taxpayers and research also indicates that a deliberate move from politicians and civil bureaucracy redirects criticism of the failure of the government toward Pakistan Army but things are otherwise. A report by DND News Agency titled ‘Absurd Governance: Who is responsible for what Pakistan is facing today?’ indicates that the privilege of a civil bureaucrat of BS-17 is ‘unimaginable’ for an officer of military bureaucracy equal to BS-17. The report explains that every officer/Jawan) of the Pakistan Army pays water, electricity, and gas bills without any discount and the Income tax is paid at source which is equivalent to two month’s salary in a year while 80 percent of officers working in civil administration are free from such billing, particularly of Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS).
Related Story: Absurd Governance: Who is responsible for what Pakistan is facing today?
“There are many myths and speculations about the lifestyle of Pakistan Army officers, and these myths are created by no one else than civil bureaucrats and politicians to hide their extravagance without taking any pain and labor. Putting the military on the butt of jokes and propaganda campaigns is the new norm in Pakistan by those who want to hide tax evasion and their failures in running the governance. On the other hand, the fault also lies with the military which is shy to share the accountability process with the public and is also avoiding telling the people how a collaboration of politicians, corrupt businessmen, and corrupt bureaucrats has eaten out the country”, the report added.
