pkpatriotic
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In the national interest
Overcome our gloom and move towards the light
Kamal Siddiqi
Monday, January 05, 2009
The writer is editor reporting, The News
As we enter the New Year, a good exercise, as a Pakistani, is to open your eyes and look around you. There is too much doom and gloom prevailing on our streets and in our houses. There are too many conspiracy theories. We have grown up on a diet of rightwing publications telling us the Americans are ready to take over Karachi and make it a free port. Other conspiracy theorists say Balochistan is going to be independent within a decade.
One senior bureaucrat, now retired, had the habit of saying within months of a political government coming to power, that the government is about to go. He was proven rightseveral times overowing to the turbulence of politics in Pakistan. But, for that one does not have to be a rocket scientist. Having said that, few Pakistanis remember that there are many challenges that Pakistan faces, but there are few that it has not faced in the past, and overcome.
Take 2008 for example. We were told that the country was about to go bankrupt once Mr Zardari became president. So irritating was this talk that finally Mr Zardari said that Pakistan is not a company that will go bankrupt. The media does play its part. We were given a blow-by-blow account of the declining foreign exchange reserves but when the situation improved, as it has done in the past months, there is silence.
One cant put a finger to it, but Mr Zardari seems to bring out the worst in many people. His appointment as president was a signal for many doomsayers to predict that Pakistans days were numbered. One does not have to be a fan of Mr Zardari to point out that the man has served several long years in jail with nothing proved against him. But this only makes the conspiracy theorists doubly sureso connected he is that they could not find anything against him.
In fact, it is rare in Pakistan that our intelligence agencies or investigation agencies are able to gather solid evidence against wrongdoers, if at all. They are made to focus on witch hunts. Take, for example, the FIAan agency devoted to investigating crime. There are few instances where the FIA has been able to gather the needed evidence on its own which could stands up to scrutiny. In most instances, the FIA is used to harass political opponents.
The poor standing of the FIA and other agencies does not rub off on the people who work in them. Despite its poor performance, the FIAs officers have done well for themselves. Rehman Malik is now de-facto interior minister of the country, while another officer, Waseem Ahmad, now heads the Karachi Police. There are rewards for those who produce results, it seems, irrespective of the quality of the work done.
We are told that the recently retired chief of the FIA will now head an anti-terrorism organization which will soon come into being. One can only wonder and marvel at the speed with which we have created layers of organisations and bureaucracies, with the end-result still being nil.
Take, for example, the duty to protect our marine frontiers. Primarily, this job goes to the Pakistani Navy but it is aided in this by the Coast Guards, also a paramilitary outfit. Not content with this, Prime Minister Junejo buckled to military pressure to allow the creation of the Maritime Security Agency (MSA) whose job almost entirely duplicates what the navy and the coast guard are doing.
Despite this impressive flotilla of bureaucracy, the end result is the same. Our waters are regularly poached by foreign trawlers. Smugglers continue to bring in all sorts of things. When a crisis strikes, our fishermen remain marooned for days at sea without help. But there are now three agencies to blame.
Why do we need an anti-terrorism organisation? Cant we do with the present setup, and only improve on it and ask them to do what they are paid to do? Despite all the talk of cutting down government expenditure, it seems that the hands of Mr Shaukat Tareen are tied on this.
How else can Mr Tareen justify the reinstatement of thousands of people who were hired by the previous PPP government but dismissed from government service when there was a change of government. Where is the budget to put thousands more on the government payroll and give them backdated dues? These parasites will bleed us dry.
The PPP government takes employment seriously. But instead of generating employment in the private sector by boosting the economy and attracting investment, it takes the easy way out by placing party faithfuls in government departments. One cannot forget the Placement Bureau headed by Ms Naheed Khan in days gone by.
But why blame the PPP alone? When Mian Nawaz Sharif was in power, he did the same for PML-N supporters. And when there is a General in power, it is his political base that benefits. In the end, however, we have organisations we have no use for, and people in jobs that dont do anything productive.
These government servants then justify their existence by trying to build on red tape and bureaucracy. Simple procedures are made difficult so that there are several babus who can benefit. Signatures and stamps are sold. And corruption continues to flourish in the land of the poor.
In all this, one can only wonder how many people are really working for Pakistan. Our anti-corruption apparatus, which includes the police, the FIA, the different agencies, as well as anti-corruption cells, wings, bureaus and task forces, have done little. Rarely do we hear of raids against government servants living beyond their means, businessmen who break rules and cut corners or traders who indulge in profiteering and adulteration.
The hope, if any, comes not from our government but from our people. Consider this. According to an email circulated recently, facts that are independently verified show that Pakistan is the most connected country in South Asia, with the highest teledensity and its communications costs are lower than in any other country in the region. This is an achievement that will stand us in good stead in the years to come.
We should be proud that Pakistan has the worlds largest biometric database (NADRA), and that this system, thanks to the brilliance and initiative of people like Saleem Moin, is now being provided to allied countries.
More important, Pakistan has the worlds largest WiMAX network and one of the worlds most aggressive Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) rollouts. Despite the rant that we need food, not mobile phones, one has to understand that Pakistan has one of the highest rates of cellular connectivity growth in the world. A tribute to Pakistani enterprise is that America is importing UAVs designed and built in Pakistan to protect Americas borders.
We are informed that with WLL (CDMA), WiMAX, GSM and FTTH, Pakistan is pretty much leading the pack in terms of diversity and breadth of connectivity and Pakistan is a first category offshoring location and that this ranking has grown by leaps and bounds.
It is interesting to note also that Pakistani companies won several awards at Asias APICTA startup/innovation conference and were considered the most interesting and cutting-edge in Asia, and that the worlds youngest Microsoft Certified Professional is a Pakistani, and so is the worlds youngest Cisco CCNA professional.
Pakistani students excelled in MITs global software talent competition, while citations of Pakistani scientific publications are rising sharply. Over two dozen Pakistani scientists are working on the Large Hadron Collider, the grandest experiment in the history of Physics.
In the final analysis, it is not the people of Pakistan that have let the country down. It is the successive governments. And the lesson in all this is that the size of government should shrink, not grow. We need less policemen and more PhDs.
QUOTE:
And the PhDs should stay in homeland and work for her development rather then to enjoy heavy perks & packages abroad after PhD on Country's expenses.
We also need responsible technicians besides the PhDs
Overcome our gloom and move towards the light
Kamal Siddiqi
Monday, January 05, 2009
The writer is editor reporting, The News
As we enter the New Year, a good exercise, as a Pakistani, is to open your eyes and look around you. There is too much doom and gloom prevailing on our streets and in our houses. There are too many conspiracy theories. We have grown up on a diet of rightwing publications telling us the Americans are ready to take over Karachi and make it a free port. Other conspiracy theorists say Balochistan is going to be independent within a decade.
One senior bureaucrat, now retired, had the habit of saying within months of a political government coming to power, that the government is about to go. He was proven rightseveral times overowing to the turbulence of politics in Pakistan. But, for that one does not have to be a rocket scientist. Having said that, few Pakistanis remember that there are many challenges that Pakistan faces, but there are few that it has not faced in the past, and overcome.
Take 2008 for example. We were told that the country was about to go bankrupt once Mr Zardari became president. So irritating was this talk that finally Mr Zardari said that Pakistan is not a company that will go bankrupt. The media does play its part. We were given a blow-by-blow account of the declining foreign exchange reserves but when the situation improved, as it has done in the past months, there is silence.
One cant put a finger to it, but Mr Zardari seems to bring out the worst in many people. His appointment as president was a signal for many doomsayers to predict that Pakistans days were numbered. One does not have to be a fan of Mr Zardari to point out that the man has served several long years in jail with nothing proved against him. But this only makes the conspiracy theorists doubly sureso connected he is that they could not find anything against him.
In fact, it is rare in Pakistan that our intelligence agencies or investigation agencies are able to gather solid evidence against wrongdoers, if at all. They are made to focus on witch hunts. Take, for example, the FIAan agency devoted to investigating crime. There are few instances where the FIA has been able to gather the needed evidence on its own which could stands up to scrutiny. In most instances, the FIA is used to harass political opponents.
The poor standing of the FIA and other agencies does not rub off on the people who work in them. Despite its poor performance, the FIAs officers have done well for themselves. Rehman Malik is now de-facto interior minister of the country, while another officer, Waseem Ahmad, now heads the Karachi Police. There are rewards for those who produce results, it seems, irrespective of the quality of the work done.
We are told that the recently retired chief of the FIA will now head an anti-terrorism organization which will soon come into being. One can only wonder and marvel at the speed with which we have created layers of organisations and bureaucracies, with the end-result still being nil.
Take, for example, the duty to protect our marine frontiers. Primarily, this job goes to the Pakistani Navy but it is aided in this by the Coast Guards, also a paramilitary outfit. Not content with this, Prime Minister Junejo buckled to military pressure to allow the creation of the Maritime Security Agency (MSA) whose job almost entirely duplicates what the navy and the coast guard are doing.
Despite this impressive flotilla of bureaucracy, the end result is the same. Our waters are regularly poached by foreign trawlers. Smugglers continue to bring in all sorts of things. When a crisis strikes, our fishermen remain marooned for days at sea without help. But there are now three agencies to blame.
Why do we need an anti-terrorism organisation? Cant we do with the present setup, and only improve on it and ask them to do what they are paid to do? Despite all the talk of cutting down government expenditure, it seems that the hands of Mr Shaukat Tareen are tied on this.
How else can Mr Tareen justify the reinstatement of thousands of people who were hired by the previous PPP government but dismissed from government service when there was a change of government. Where is the budget to put thousands more on the government payroll and give them backdated dues? These parasites will bleed us dry.
The PPP government takes employment seriously. But instead of generating employment in the private sector by boosting the economy and attracting investment, it takes the easy way out by placing party faithfuls in government departments. One cannot forget the Placement Bureau headed by Ms Naheed Khan in days gone by.
But why blame the PPP alone? When Mian Nawaz Sharif was in power, he did the same for PML-N supporters. And when there is a General in power, it is his political base that benefits. In the end, however, we have organisations we have no use for, and people in jobs that dont do anything productive.
These government servants then justify their existence by trying to build on red tape and bureaucracy. Simple procedures are made difficult so that there are several babus who can benefit. Signatures and stamps are sold. And corruption continues to flourish in the land of the poor.
In all this, one can only wonder how many people are really working for Pakistan. Our anti-corruption apparatus, which includes the police, the FIA, the different agencies, as well as anti-corruption cells, wings, bureaus and task forces, have done little. Rarely do we hear of raids against government servants living beyond their means, businessmen who break rules and cut corners or traders who indulge in profiteering and adulteration.
The hope, if any, comes not from our government but from our people. Consider this. According to an email circulated recently, facts that are independently verified show that Pakistan is the most connected country in South Asia, with the highest teledensity and its communications costs are lower than in any other country in the region. This is an achievement that will stand us in good stead in the years to come.
We should be proud that Pakistan has the worlds largest biometric database (NADRA), and that this system, thanks to the brilliance and initiative of people like Saleem Moin, is now being provided to allied countries.
More important, Pakistan has the worlds largest WiMAX network and one of the worlds most aggressive Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) rollouts. Despite the rant that we need food, not mobile phones, one has to understand that Pakistan has one of the highest rates of cellular connectivity growth in the world. A tribute to Pakistani enterprise is that America is importing UAVs designed and built in Pakistan to protect Americas borders.
We are informed that with WLL (CDMA), WiMAX, GSM and FTTH, Pakistan is pretty much leading the pack in terms of diversity and breadth of connectivity and Pakistan is a first category offshoring location and that this ranking has grown by leaps and bounds.
It is interesting to note also that Pakistani companies won several awards at Asias APICTA startup/innovation conference and were considered the most interesting and cutting-edge in Asia, and that the worlds youngest Microsoft Certified Professional is a Pakistani, and so is the worlds youngest Cisco CCNA professional.
Pakistani students excelled in MITs global software talent competition, while citations of Pakistani scientific publications are rising sharply. Over two dozen Pakistani scientists are working on the Large Hadron Collider, the grandest experiment in the history of Physics.
In the final analysis, it is not the people of Pakistan that have let the country down. It is the successive governments. And the lesson in all this is that the size of government should shrink, not grow. We need less policemen and more PhDs.
QUOTE:
And the PhDs should stay in homeland and work for her development rather then to enjoy heavy perks & packages abroad after PhD on Country's expenses.
We also need responsible technicians besides the PhDs
