Category: bureaucracy

Now Sialkot would be known for two Muhammad Iqbals – one who saw a dream, and the other who lived it – at least for some time.

One single ADC(R) of Sialkot – a bureaucrat – has done corruption worth millions of rupees. There were alleged foreign tours. Commercial and other properties. Land Cruiser. Rolex, unlike James Bond. Millions in cash.

He’s been taken. On trial now. Let’s see how innocent he comes out of the judicial brothel.

Now that’s just one bastard in the hierarchy.

Imagine all of them. In provincial and federal offices. Count each and every one among all their ‘superior’ groups in the entirety of the hierarchy of bastards. And you may be able to count how much they rake in through corruption.

Pakistan can get rid of all the foreign loans if they can take back from what the bureaucracy takes out from the system. We don’t even need to talk about Swiss accounts or offshore companies or some pizzas.

Remember: they are nurtured by the state. Like a mother nurturing her child from an extramarital… oh! Please, let me write straight…

They get free cars, homes, electricity, servants, petrol, etc. Then they get more from the department they’re posted in. Then they have subsidized education for their kids and free one for themselves – usually Masters in Public Policy from international universities – another waste of millions – because it brings nothing home, and doesn’t even count as corruption.

After all this, they get salaries. Which is basically the pocket money as everything else is already paid for by the state. Comparing their salary with someone, even a CEO of some company, is a gross miscalculation and injustice.

Let me give you an example. A Deputy Secretary I know of. Did CSS. Entered PAS. Now in a provincial department as a DS. Can’t wake up early. Comes to office after 1 PM – right at lunchtime, catered by another wing of the Department. After that he sits and roams and meets friends. Signs a couple of files upwards or downwards. Send 2-4 messages on WhatsApp in a week. Hasn’t opened his laptop for work in the last year. Rarely attends a meeting. And managed to have a couple of foreign tours already. Sexy.

For doing all this service, he gets all that is mentioned above. If you calculate all that is spent on him by the state in a month, it would be over Rs.2 million. And what does he give back? Middle-finger!

Mind you, we haven’t counted under the table deals here. Not even a mango crate’s worth. Otherwise, even after everything they get from the state for passing a test, they’ve got pig bellies, and they want more. So, they take whatever comes their way. They don’t even leave orphans and widows.

Other than all this, if you get to know how they exploit women sexually based on their official powers and seat, you will get to know a lot of them are manipulative predators. Not all. But definitely a lot. Because the seat they put their arse on, can do some wonders. Not them. The seat.

Anyway, that one arrest in Sialkot is the tip of the iceberg. It will be covered. And cooled down. Because these incompetents are still running the show. They will let the system keep on moving like that as they have been doing since the British Raj.

A month back, the Prime Minister Office published an advertisement to hire Federal Secretaries from private sector. Even the worst form of the government is tired of these bureaucrats – because they don’t know a damn thing. They keep on misguiding the governments to run on outdated ideas and processes. That advertisement jolted the bureaucrats, and they resisted – panicked, even.

Anyway, even Federal Secretaries from private sector cannot do miracles. Because there will be a complete hierarchy of bureaucrats below them who will not let them win.

And that is why no single man / woman can take this country out of the mess – until both civil and uncivil establishments are taken by balls. One needs to be removed, the other, to be screwed.

In private companies and multinationals, The higher you go in the hierarchy, the more you see people who know more. Experts. Doers. Even in negative sense, like those who deal in litigations, know how to drag a case for decades.

These people rarely change their industry or field of expertise. So, they keep on growing and becoming genius. By that, I don’t mean they’re righteous too.

In government services, things are different. The higher you see in the hierarchy, you will get to see people who know less. They are mostly dumb and clueless, yet absolutely confident in their own world.

A Secretary is more confused than Special Secretary who knows less than the Additional Secretary who doesn’t know the relevant Deputy Secretary who doesn’t know where the Section Officer is. Just like that. But then, a Secretary doesn’t like to talk to Section Officer directly – who happens to know comparatively more than them. So, they get annoyed.

For example, a Secretary will forward a WhatsApp message to Special Secretary who will forward the same to Additional Secretary who will forward it to… getting it? This is frustrating. So, they need someone to hit with insults and shouts.

Before going further, let me elaborate on different species of civil disservice. There are CSPs, inducted through the CSS exam at the federal level. They have different groups, of which top are PAS followed by PSP, FSP, etc. By the bottom end, there are CSS groups who are nothing more than regularized clerks happened to have cleared the exam.

Then comes PMS – a PAS kinda service but at provincial level.

PMS Officers are usually there to get the spit of PAS Officers. They are human punching bags. Help in defusing the tension. And that’s their core responsibility.

You will identify a PMS from PAS instantly. A dumb PAS will look confident, but a dumb PMS will look dumb. One is a hypocrite; the other one is a plain idiot.

“You may ask: why do they choose to accept such ugly jobs? Well, what else could the do? Who else would hire them? A private organization or MNC? One has to make a living, be it based on spit from higher hierarchy. Also, even if the pay is less, perks are enormous.

They get good cars. Free petrol. Big houses. Managed electricity bills. Opportunity to study abroad after induction. Interest free loans in millions. PRs. Fruits and vegetables in bulk. Party invitations. Almost daily gifts. Drivers and maids. Under the table salary. Over the table salary. Behind the curtain salary.

You get your salary, and it goes to rent, maid, kitchen, petrol, bills, car maintenance, etc. and then you have some to spend at will. They get everything and then comes salary.

You can’t even comprehend that. Leave it.

The point is, PASs and PMSs officers are nurtured by the state. Till death. And even then, they deceive, belittle and hurt this country whenever they can and wherever they can.

Anyway. Dragged it a lot. Just wanted to tell you that PMS had a clearly defined job responsibility.

Blunders happen. But then, there are blunders only bastards can perform with eloquence.

Fiscal year or financial year budget is of 12 months. “Year.” Our FY starts from 1st of very July and ends on 30th of June. Budget – both development and non-development – is for a complete FY. This also means, that all the un-utilized funds shall lapse on 30th of June. Departments try their best – which is at par with worse – to utilize maximum funds.

And utilization is by far the only KPI that bureaucracy knows. Anyway, we are discussing something else. Not bastards.

Since we had an ugly caretaker-cum-PCB setup in Punjab, the budget presented for FY 2023-24 was for July to October. Funds lapsed on 31st October. Interestingly, no one had idea that funds would lapse. Even Finance Department was clueless. You can’t even believe what kind of comedy that was.

Anyway, new budget was announced for November 2023 to February 2024. That also lapsed in the last week of February 2024.

And now, surprise, surprise! Budget has been announced for one month i.e., March 2024. From 1st March to 31st March. By the time funds will be released – i.e., mid of the month – it will also be the time for closing of the Financial Year. Or financial month.

What next? Budget for a week? It’s so gross.

That’s why I say you cannot sustain with bureaucracy anymore. Even good politicians cannot do anything good. They will innovate such ugly measures that nothing will happen yet the whole secretariat will look like an Emergency Department. Everyone is running. Doing nothing.

Smog covered Lahore for the first time when PMLN was in power. It sustained during PTI’s tenure. And then continued through PDM’s episode. It’s been a decade; got uglier this season.

Today, it covers three divisions. Like 9 cities. Successfully.

Do you know who remained constant all this while when political pawns were being placed and replaced? Bureaucracy. The suited booted CSS babus. Looking nice, intelligent, philosophical, and literary with only an iota of functioning brain.

‘Hierarchy of Bastards.’ In simple words.

Every season, the Chief Secretary calls a meeting. Before smog. During smog. Afterwards. Meetings and more meetings. And they end up as clueless as they always are.

And every season, we have a new Chief Secretary who doesn’t know what the previous one said in golden words. So, the same episodes are telecasted each season.

It is like joining a new department after messing up the previous one without any strings attached. Working hard and hardly working. That’s what CSS is about and that’s why people aspire one to be. Have all the resources with zero output, ignominious corruption, and no punishment.

Sky is the limit.

But they do have a comedic sense to the crises.

For instance, if you ask these bureaucrats how are they going to manage this smog, they may come back with out-of-the-box comments. They can tell you it is their “Family Planning” initiative to manage the challenge of population in the long-run. They will elaborate how it will reduce 7-years of people’s life and how it will resolve issues of crime, pension, food scarcity, and obviously, population.

They will brief the timeline. Like it was in a pilot mode a decade back, and now it is in Phase-II with three divisions covered.

Jokes apart, they can utter the same in public if they are given such notes by their subordinates. Remember that speech in 3 Idiots? That guy on dice reading whatever was in front of him could have been the most suitable candidate for CSS.

Anyway. Do you know how bureaucracy is overseeing Smog?

Multiple projects for the elite are in progress. DHA Lahore will be connected to Gulberg and Jail Road – signal free. Cavalry is closed for an underpass. Walton Road is closed for a bridge near Cavalry, while the nullah of that road is flowing on the road along with the traffic. Looks so nice.

Akbar Chowk is all messed up with an under-construction bridge for months.

Central Business District (CBD) – or you can call next level real estate work of civil and military establishment – is in full progress. This should have been the Central Park of Lahore to mitigate smog, but boys thought to make money out of it. They even threw Walton Airport out of the city for this billion-dollar business. For elites. Not you. A new road will connect Walton from Packages’ side to Kalma Chowk.

More concrete is being laid in the city. More and more. Less space for trees. Less space for oxygen.

But worry not. The bureaucrats are managing it will. Some decades down the road, people will remember how population crises was handled. With smog.

It’s like Lahore’s bureaucracy against South Punjab in general. And usual.

While the venue is always Lahore.

You have a problem?

Come to Lahore from Alipur, Muzaffargarh, D. G. Khan, R. Y. Khan, Fort Munro, Rajanpur, Multan, and Bahawalpur.

Come to Lahore for interviews. To submit an application. For the Ombudsman’s hearing. To meet a Secretary. To beg a Section Officer. To pay the bribe. To wait in corridors. For all the routine ugly stuff for your disgrace.

But, most probably, as soon as you enter, the Babu may have left already. Or the meeting has been postponed. Or the mood. Mood swings without PMS.

PMS. Some of them are from PMS actually. But mostly are CSS. It’s a federally owned curse in the whole country.

Anyway.

Lahore had been brutal today. At least in the later half.

And Multan should lose. To keep the records straight.