A Letter from Prometheus
Last week I had a group call with school friends living abroad for the last three to four decades. Conversation with schoolfellows is always a blessing because it makes you as young as a 10-year-old boy; at least for some hours— nostalgia is the biggest reality of middle age. Almost all of my friends were expressing worries about the motherland they left behind and everybody was asking me questions about what would be next as Pakistan, according to them, is on the verge of economic collapse.
I had no answer to share with them although I had many covert answers for myself. We have already collapsed morally and socially, and that would later or sooner result in economic collapse. I know I live in a state where thousands of former employees of the State take half a million rupees as their monthly pensions, over one and a half million as monthly salaries and even there are many who take double the figures I mentioned above as monthly salaries and pensions while the poor are selling their bodies for Rs 1000 or so because they do not have anything left to sell.
A video report I recently watched explains the prostitution business is thriving in Lahore, particularly in slum areas. When we probe the situation we find that prostitution is not being chosen for money making but rather for clearing electricity and gas bills by a large number of people who have lost hope and seek opportunities to survive. A single-question survey can be conducted in which you can ask people randomly in the street “Whom the state of Pakistan is serving?” I believe you will find the majority of answers telling you that the state is working only for state institutions and state employees while the economic opportunities are squeezing every passing day for the 230 million population with over 50 percent youth.
Regrettably, our youth is mostly unskilled or semi-skilled, so what option is left with them? I believe that the ongoing census will tell us horrific data about the reality of our social structure (if this census is being done honestly and if its actual report is ever shared with the public). I trust our State knows the reality but it does not want to indulge in fixing or rectifying and it is following the policy of “let people decide themselves”. I firmly believe that the State is waiting for an explosion because this is the best option to fix the situation once social collapse completes its natural cycle. We will see how long it will take to complete the cycle.
As I mentioned above that people think that State is the mother of only state institutions and its employees, I would share recent news that would give my reader an idea how the State is working for state employees.
The meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Aviation, on March 3, found an overpayment of Rs272 billion to Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) pensioners. A special audit was recommended by the committee but I know nothing would come out of this and nobody would be tried for this mess because they all belong to an all-powerful cadre of society.
The meeting observed the payment of pensions and emoluments to retired employees of the CAA that retired between 2014-2015 and 2022-2023.
The federal wage bill multiplied 2.9 times during the decade, while the strength, which had actually been on a declining path until 2016, remained unchanged at one million. In 2016-2017, 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 2019-2020 as a result of the restructuring of the federal government, but this reduction is only in lower grades.
The committee was informed that the said retired employees were supposed to be paid pensions and other emoluments according to the CAA Pay and Pensions Regulations, 2014 (amended 2019); however, instead have been paid according to the Government of Pakistan as per the CAA Service Regulations 2000. It was observed that employees were granted pension increases in line with the federal government till 2019. This resulted in an overpayment to CAA pensioners, the disbursement of which amounts to Rs 272 billion. Just imagine how the State is working for State employees.
Foreign media claims that Pakistan’s external debt and liabilities have virtually reached $130 billion, that according to foreign media is 95.39 percent of Pakistan’s GDP.
Pakistani media is confirming that inflation is at its highest in 48 years as food inflation reached 42.9 percent compared to 12.8 percent last year, bringing the country into a severe economic crisis. In these circumstances, the State is ensuring that its employees must get more benefits. Since the lower staff in the Federal government has access to all documents about what the elite superclass is getting as salaries, perks, privileges, and packages, so satisfying the lower staff is an excellent move for bureaucrats before they start sharing data with the public out of their “Pakistaniat”, so sharing more benefit with them was also the need of the day. In the second week of February 2023, the Finance Division notified special dispensation for the federal government employees from pay scale 1-15 with retrospective effect, January 1.
BPS-01 to BPS-05 will be granted two higher pay scales as a one-time dispensation if they have not availed of time scales under timescale policy-2022. BPS-06 to BPS-15 will be granted the next higher scale as a one-time dispensation if they have not availed of time scale under the time scale Policy-2022. Employees in BPS-16 will be granted one additional increment as time dispensation, the post of lower division clerk (LDC) will be upgraded from BPS-09 to BPS-11 and that of upper division clerk (UDC) from BPS-11 to BPS-13 along with incumbents, and recruitment rules will be amended by Establishment Division accordingly as per upgradation policy.
According to an article by Dr. Ishrat Husain titled “3.2 million government employees: Is the bureaucracy too big?”, the government employs 3.2 million. Total government expenditure is around 22 percent 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 percent of the total, up slightly from 66 percent 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 actually been on a declining path until 2016, remained unchanged at one million. In 2016-2017, 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 2019-2020 as a result of the restructuring of the federal government, but this reduction is only in lower grades.
Dr. Ishrat Husain says 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.
While providing break-up of services he indicates that 35 percent of federal employees are serving in security, and law and order agencies (civilian armed forces such as the Rangers, Frontier Constabulary, police, FIA, Intelligence Bureau, and civilians working at GHQ, PAF, and PN headquarters and establishments), 20 percent were engaged in the provision of infrastructure services including in Railways, postal services, highways, ports, and aviation. Power generation, transmission, and distribution, and oil, and gas have 18 percent. The remaining 27 percent are engaged in social sectors, commercial and trade promotion, tax collection, regulatory, judicial and quasi-judicial (tribunals), training and research, external relations, media relations, parliamentary support, and the Islamabad Capital Territory.
A reader is better to judge what kind of services they are providing to a common Pakistani who is serving them with her or his blood and sweat. None of them looks ready to sacrifice for the country by accepting reductions in pensions, salaries, perks, allowances, and so` on. Why should they sacrifice their packages because the country had readily available 230 million sacrificial heads if ever there is a need for enhancing tax collection?
