Performance audit

According to a Business Recorder exclusive Ghulam Murtaza Jatoi, the Federal Minister for Industries and Production expressed serious concern at the performance of his staff, in the ministry and attached departments, and instructed them to submit the status of all cases of his office that are pending in Federal Investigation Agency (FIA)/National Accountability Bureau (NAB). The objective, one would hope, is to take appropriate action and remove those under investigation from at least financially sensitive positions but a strong rumour in the capital is that those who feel threatened by any action from within their ministry proactively seek influence in the office of the prime minister, which is extremely unfortunate.
Jatoi also instructed his staff that the terms of reference for the position of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) be cleared by him prior to advertising a vacant post. This is no doubt designed to mitigate the tendency to match the terms of reference to the qualifications/experience of an already selected candidate.
Be that as it may, such instructions highlight the trend in the Nawaz Sharif administration to centralise control over key appointments in the office of the Prime Minister. This trend is extremely unfortunate because it perpetuates the system that has been denigrated not only by the country's superior courts but also by the general public as it promotes nepotism in appointments. While the PPP-led coalition government made major appointments based on nepotism - the most obvious example being the appointment of Tauqir Sadiq with an FA degree and no relevant experience as chairman of Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) - yet over the past 16 months of the incumbent government it has become clear that the Prime Minister is selecting key candidates based on his personal assessment. The Prime Minister, one is compelled to assume, operates on the belief that he has more than adequate capacity to select the right individual for the right job.
There is no doubt that the general public feels that the Prime Minister has made some serious errors in selecting his cabinet, errors that he has shown a reluctance to publicly acknowledge and has therefore made no appropriate changes; yet by keeping senior appointment decisions in the office of the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has, perhaps unintentionally, further strengthened the existing flawed system which would continue to perform poorly when Nawaz Sharif is no longer the head of government. This country has suffered tremendously because of weakly operating systems and this has been patently evident in selection of CEOs. In the past, civilian and military governments both appointed their blue-eyed boys on key positions, which is one of the major reasons for financial woes of several public sector entities causing hundreds of billions of rupees annual loss requiring budgetary support.
It is relevant to note that Nawaz Sharif, as per Supreme Court directives, did set up a three-man committee to shortlist and then select candidates for senior government positions; however, the Prime Minister's failure to accept the selected candidates by the three-man committee, widely hailed as consisting of men of integrity, led to the resignation of the committee members last year. Thus the committee remains redundant while the process of selections has slowed down because most of the appointments are being challenged. One would hope that the prime minister takes cognisance of the situation and makes appropriate and necessary adjustments.
The Prime Minister's focus must be on weakening not strengthening the existing practice thereby strengthening the system itself to develop the capacity to deliver irrespective of who the country's chief executive officer is.