Though nothing is yet confirmed and fuller picture would emerge when details are formally announced after approval of the Federal Cabinet, but reports appearing in the media suggest that the proposed civil service reforms would be comprehensive in nature, taking care of all relevant issues especially weeding out of dead wood from the bureaucracy. The reforms will reportedly allow the government to retire non-performing and inefficient civil servants prematurely after 20 years of service.
Performance, output and efficiency of the Government has much to do with the quality of the civil service, which has deteriorated over the years mainly because of flawed recruitment system, lateral and political inductions, unattractive and non-transparent promotion and career development process, favouritism and lack of proper monitoring and evaluation system. This is despite the fact that apart from other countries, we also had a good model in our own country where armed forces have an excellent career management system that encouraged efficiency and excellence. The salient features of the proposed reforms offer an opportunity to address the ills and improve the system through a combination of measures aimed at rewarding the competent and penalizing the inefficient. The proposal for regular reviews after 20 years of service to get rid of non-performing personnel has the potential to encourage competition and initiative, which are pre-requisites for improving the delivery of service. But there is also need to keep a strict vigil on performance of each and every employee throughout his/her career right from induction to superannuation. There is a system of writing of Performance Evaluation Reports (PERs) but these are hardly written in an objective or a neutral manner and do not truly reflect the ground realities. Presently, there are thousands of personnel who made their way to the civil service through non-transparent methods and even obtained jobs on fake degrees. They must get a clear message: improve performance or go home.
