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Express Tribune
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Standard operating torture
Pakistan refuses to reform its archaic bureaucratic processes. Ordinary citizens loaded with worthless photocopies, application forms and affidavits are made to visit, wait and bribe the peons in government offices to receive the most ordinary and mundane services. How does the 21st Century Pakistan create misery in the lives of its ordinary citizens. Here is what a parent has to undergo to obtain a child's Transfer Certificate (TC) when relocating from one government school to another. Visit the old school and ask for the TC. You are asked to fill an application form and come again with the filled form along with photocopies of the child's B Form, Birth Certificate and father's CNIC. Thus, a second visit is required to deposit the assembled documents. You are now told to come after two or three days. The third visit (for collection of TC), would invariably meet a standard response: 'Please come again as the school principal has not been available to sign the TC.' The individual seeking the certificate understands that any arguments could only result in further delay. He obsequiously agrees to make a fourth visit after another two days. This time he is told to wait, as the principal is busy. He waits for an hour or so, till the TC is signed and handed over. Four visits and bundles of irrelevant photocopies of documents already held by government are the standard operating torture (SOT) for ordinary citizen to obtain the routine government services. Pakistan ought to treat its citizens with respect and eliminate all visits to government offices and learn how the world has linked all government services to avoid endless submission of photocopies. Naeem Sadiq Karachi
Express Tribune
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Wasteful indulgences
Never has one witnessed such an intense and unanimous sense of anguish, anger and aversion amongst the ordinary citizens, against the wasteful squandering of state resources, extracted from the poor, and gifted on a platter to please and pamper the rich. FBR's Rs6 billion wasteful vehicular extravaganza and the parliamentarians pay jump from Rs180,000 to Rs519,000 per month are the two recent examples of this wasteful imprudence. While pushing for a 188% rise in their own salaries, did it never occur to our parliamentarians that the minimum wage of 90 million workers was raised only by 15 per cent (from 32K to 37K) and that too denied to 60% of the workers? Do they not know that the 12,000 sanitation workers of Sindh Solid Waste Board still receive illegal wages between Rs16,000 and Rs20,000 per month? Are they not aware that one million private security guards are made to work for 12 hours a day at one-third of their legally entitled wage? Have they never seen railway coolies who must surrender one-third of their daily wage to a railway appointed contractor every day? Did no one inform them of the 237 coalminers who lost their lives in 2024 because the state spent more time (and money) on gratifying the already privileged instead of improving the safety of mines and wellbeing of miners? Pakistan ought to relinquish the above mentioned (and other similar) wasteful indulgences and make a law that the salary of no government official will be more than 5 times the minimum legal wage notified for an ordinary worker. Pakistan's progress is deeply dependent on the wellbeing of its ordinary citizens and not the one's seeking 188% pay rise. Naeem Sadiq Karachi
