Field visit, performance reports: Sindh chief minister directives to secretaries fall on deaf ears

Chief Minister Sindh Syed Qaim Ali Shah's directives to provincial secretaries to pay filed visits to monitor development works and submit reports have fallen on deaf ears, as no secretary has submitted such report or conducted filed visit.
Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah had written a letter to Senior Member Board of Revenue, Chairman Anti Corruption and all provincial secretaries recently, asking for field visits and submission of periodical reports by the secretaries, sources said. The text of the letter, a copy of which is available with Business Recorder, states that "A secretary is not only to look after the file/office work in air-conditioned offices.
But also to visit districts from time to time for having real sense of problems of people at grass root level and to generate field visit reports on regular/periodical basis highlighting these problems/issue for perusal of chief minister."
Unfortunately, not a single secretary has submitted any such report", it added. Being the heads of administrative departments and responsible for carrying out development works, the secretaries showed reluctance to go in the fields due to hot weather and many other problems.
The bureaucrats instead of assigning this job to their juniors tasked the officials of planning and development department to do the job, sources added. Another letter issued by the Monitoring and Evaluation Cell (MEC) stated that the chief secretary had desired that Planning and Development Department should conduct field visits of development schemes at the site on regular basis and submit report.
In this regard, the Additional Chief Secretary (Development) directed the senior chiefs/chief of sections to chalk out their field visit programs and submit the same for the approval. However, the officials of MEC would also accompany them during their field visits, they said.
Sources opined that it was not the job of planning officers as they were not supposed to supervise development work, adding that if they go to the fields then who would continue the planning job at Sindh Secretariat.
They said that the officials would remain absent for three days as the authorities had scheduled filed visit for Friday. "How is it possible for an officer to return to office on the next day after a field visit of Jacobabad or any other district of interior Sindh?, they questioned.