Dr Ishrat calling it a day today

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister’s Advisor on Institutional Reforms and Austerity Dr Ishrat Husain will attend the last cabinet meeting on Tuesday (today) as his resignation will be effective from September 1, 2021 (tomorrow).

“Today is the last working day of Dr Husain as Advisor to PM,” said one of his colleagues.

On July 30, 2021, Dr Husain, in a note to the media, had confirmed that he has submitted his resignation as Adviser to the Prime Minister with the request to relieve him of his responsibilities with effect from September 1, 2021.

An official said that Dr Husain will be appreciated by the Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues for his untiring work to reform the system. To a question, he said that Dr Husain has prepared a number of reports of different sectors, entities and merger of departments. However, implementation on those reports is the responsibility of the government.

Dr Husain has also written a book on his work for government reforms, which probably will be distributed among the cabinet members today.

Dr Husain claims that during the last three years he was able to design and obtain the approval of the Cabinet on the following set of reforms: (i) reorganise the Federal Government and ease the burden on the exchequer by reducing the number of organizational entities from 441 to 307 ; (ii) restructure and reform top 10 loss-making State-owned Enterprises such as PIA, Railways, Pakistan Steel Mills and key institutions such as FBR, Auditor General, SECP; (iii) Public Finance Management Law under which the powers of the Ministry of finance have been delegated to the line ministries and introduction of E-Office suite in the Federal Ministries to improve efficiency and transparency; (iv) Civil Service Reforms such as Performance Agreements between the Prime Minister and the Ministers and a new Performance Management System, Systematic Training of Ex-Cadre Officers, induction of technical expertise in the Federal Ministries, specialized streams within the Secretariat, reducing the hierarchical tiers, new promotion policy, directory retirement rules; and (v) an open, transparent selection process for appointment of CEOs/MDs of Public Sector Organizations based purely on merit.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021