THE Cabinet Committee on Economic Revival is reported to have finalized a number of proposals aimed at rationalization of government expenditure in the backdrop of the prevailing financial crunch. The recommendations, among other things, include freezing salaries, pensions and allowances of the Government employees, bringing down officer-to-staff ratio both in federal and provincial governments to 1:3, a review of untargeted subsidies and grants and refocusing of the PSDP schemes.
Of course, the recommendations would be thoroughly debated by the Federal Cabinet before approval and loopholes, if any, removed but on the face of it the Committee has not been able to propose out-of-box solutions to the economic woes of the country and instead, once again, relied on traditional approaches that failed to produce any tangible benefit to the country in the past and are unlikely to do so now. There is wasteful expenditure in the public sector like gross misuse of transport, telephone, medical and travel facilities besides rampant corruption in purchase and procurement processes as well as free of cost use of electricity, gas, transport and telephone. The Government can save hundreds of billions by ensuring judicious utilization of these facilities and abolition of undue perks and privileges but regrettably the focus seems to be on a freeze on salaries and pensions. Salaries and pensions in the public sector have already lost their worth in the face of record-breaking inflation which has forced the fixed-income groups to compromise on the quality of their life. The Government can surely freeze salaries and pensions if and when it succeeds in curbing inflation but it seems to be utterly helpless on this account and therefore, there is absolutely no justification for exploitation of the government employees and pensioners. The plan to gradually reduce the officer-to-staff ratio to 1:3 in a gradual manner can help address the chronic problems of overstaffing in some departments and institutions but it cannot be applied on the analogy of aircraft-to-employees ratio and has to be determined keeping working of each ministry and department in view. It is also unfortunate that every time when proposals are firmed up to bring down expenditure, the axe invariably falls on the development expenditure. In countries like ours, the public sector development programme is considered to be a prime factor in accelerating growth and creating employment opportunities and it is a myopic approach to scale down development expenditure every now and then.
