EDITORIAL: It almost beggars belief that Punjab’s caretaker government would release Rs 2.3 billion – an astronomical amount considering the current cash crunch – for the purchase of new vehicles for all its assistant commissioners, additional deputy commissioners and additional commissioners.
The temporary setup has come under criticism for overstaying its invitation, though the official/legal machinery is more to blame for it than the caretaker setup itself, but it has also won appreciation for its own austerity, driven by caretaker chief minister Mohsin Naqvi himself.
It is very well known that his cabinet does not take salaries from the exchequer, nor is any member allowed to order food or drinks, even morning tea, at its expense.
For it to suddenly become so fiscally reckless is, therefore, very surprising; especially since it’s for nothing more than furnishing all the commissioners, who are already bloated enough at the state’s expense, with even better, bigger luxury vehicles.
The ones currently used by them shall devolve to tehsildars, so everybody will be happy in this old game of sprinkling expensive gifts on the most blue-eyed of the civil service. This has happened when ordinary Pakistanis are suffering from record inflation and unemployment, of course, so it’s easy to see why this step would rub them the wrong way and very difficult to understand why the provisional setup didn’t factor in this particular aspect of politics in its decision.
Now the Punjab administration has opened itself to accusations that lack of public accountability (read elections) tends to induce such thoughtlessness in decision-makers. The caretaker setup came with just one mandate, that is to facilitate elections. And now that it’s stayed for much longer than the stipulated 90-day period, and still has some time left in office, it seems to be going about things like a regular provincial government; which, again, oversteps important lines in the constitution.
But this decision is still strange. Pakistan’s electoral history shows that outgoing administrations like to shower bureaucrats with expensive goodbye gifts in the hope, rather belief, that they would facilitate their return and both would then live and work happily for the next cycle, at least. And this is a temporary setup with no political history or ambitions.
Why, then, would it invite such sharp criticism after doing such a fine job, especially fiscally, that too over a matter that didn’t really need any fiddling with at this time?
It’s very unfortunate that even administrators that are not beholden, rather captive, to the whims of the civil service also go the extra mile to deepen economic cleavages in the country. The fact that those in the official machinery live very different lives than ordinary people never gets highlighted so strongly as in an economic downturn.
While average Pakistanis are sweating about making ends meet, putting food on the table and keeping the kids in school in these extraordinary times, officers in the service have all these issues duly addressed by the state itself. And, to make things worse, those who sign on the dotted line go a step further and lavish them with luxuries like fancy cars, etc., as well, intentionally or unintentionally rubbing salt into the average Joe’s wounds.
Since the people, more than the service, are the government’s real constituency, may one ask what the Punjab government did about ordinary people’s ability to get better transport before gifting top-range vehicles to commissioners? Or, for that matter, one also wonders what made a new, far more expensive, fleet of cars so important for them at this point in time. The least the Punjab government can and should do is provide answers to questions that its own actions have given rise to.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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