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Pakistan needs [HASHTAG]#overhauling[/HASHTAG] in #
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police etc etc as [HASHTAG]#incompetents[/HASHTAG] been recruited from top to bottom. As such the cause of the Thursday's rail tragedy which took at least 19 really prestigious lives of army officers, soldiers and their families has become a mystery, once more!!!
Pakistan desperately requires "meritocracy" throughout from top to bottom. Competency and professional standards are needed to be introduced across the board.
In the national interest all state departments need to be screened and get their current and future employees through some strict competitive exams. Merit and professionalism is very serious and absolutely necessary for us especially if we want to compete with India and the rest of the world. Such cleansing necessitates even more given that after the independence in Pakistan merit and professional standards have never been followed as they should have been followed.
Corruption is a very serious rather a burning issue for Pakistan. Because incompetency is now causing direct harm to the structure and "national interest" of Pakistan. Pakistan needs to stop brain drain to UK, USA & EU and team up its professionals from within the country and abroad and merge their services to improve its infrastructure immediately.
If the current government cannot protect Pakistan Army then why shouldn't Pak Army look after itself and takeover from Nawaz government which is rather a waste of time! It's purely due to lack of competence that Pakistan Railways authorities inclusive of Mr S. Rafique have turn down suggestions of the tragedy being the consequence of an act of terrorism while also jumping to claim that the bridge in question was capable of handling railway traffic. But something indeed went wrong that caused this bloodstained episode. Official explanations aside, the bridge in question according to Pakistani media reports was built in British colonial times. Alas, this is just one of a large number of monuments across Pakistan that were built by British colonial rulers, albeit to suit the needs of South Asia’s foreign masters. And yet, while living in a decolonized and independent country, life for Pakistanis including many afflicted with unending daily pain is far from perfect.
The train crash coincided with continuing reports of low income and electricity-deprived neighborhoods across the southern port city of Karachi suffering more than just the consequences of a continuing heat wave. More than 1,200 people have died since the arrival of brutal summer temperatures combined with ever growing electricity shortages and a virtual absence of water supply. What could be worse? Possibly an active war zone.
Ironically, these troubling times have coincided with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pressing ahead with one whimsical choice after another, while visibly paying little more than lip service to real life challenges.. Seemingly ignoring the plight of mainstream Pakistanis and their unending pain, Sharif’s government so far appears to have utterly failed in tackling the country’s most pressing issues. Just days before Thursday’s tragedy, Sharif formally inaugurated a new expressway which is meant to eventually Islamabad with the suburban town of Rawat.
The project will supposedly allow a free flow of traffic without any signals along the way, cutting down time for travelers to and from the capital. Ironically though, neither Rawat nor Islamabad are able to assure a reliable supply of electricity or water to the poorest of the poor neighborhoods. In recent weeks, rising summer temperatures have coincided with severe water shortages across urban Pakistan including Islamabad, just adding grief to the ongoing pain.
The capital’s irony is indeed all too visible for those who have recently seen Sharif’s government formally launch a new air-conditioned bus service, inaugurated by the prime minister amidst much fanfare. Known as Islamabad’s metrobus, the project is indeed in line with the ruling structure’s refusal to accept the writing on the wall. While Pakistanis suffer in pain, the ruling structure presses ahead with its fanciful choices ignoring the needs of ordinary Pakistanis.
The Islamabad bus project has followed a similar venture earlier undertaken in the city of Lahore-Sharif’s home town. Ironically though, even Lahore’s poverty stricken neighborhoods present a dismal picture of brutal energy shortages just like other parts of Pakistan, with their home grown leader showing little capability of providing hope for the foreseeable future.
Going forward as Pakistan battles multiple challenges, Sharif and other members of the ruling structure continue to pursue their choices which are hardly in sync with Pakistan’s rapidly growing needs. A new train project is planned to run in Lahore and that too on electricity, further aggravating the existing shortages. Another train project is planned to run from Islamabad to Muzaffarabad in the mountainous region of Kashmir. Indeed, such ventures promise to gobble up billions of Dollars which Pakistan will end up borrowing and subsequently adding to the cost of keeping up with its ever growing debt payments. For ordinary Pakistanis, any number of fanciful projects just do not provide hope for a more promising future. In contrast, they only promise to aggravate their daily living conditions. Ending the growing pain for Pakistanis requires more than just a mere policy shift. Indeed, there has to be a radical shift not just in the thinking processes but also in terms of the choices made. The aggravation surrounding poorest of the poor Pakistanis is so immense that nothing short of a national emergency is urgently needed to make a difference. Pakistan’s ruling elite in fact need to halt the country’s under execution or planned fanciful projects wherever immediately possible. To manage the crisis, there needs to be a fresh and concerted push on diverting all available resources on just three pivotal areas.
In order to survive, be competitive and make some progress Pakistan govt needs to get its priorities right. Our agricultural based economy needs a proper network of canals and irrigation in order to reduce the affects of Indian monopoly and control on our rivers (inc the Chenab, Satluj, Jehlum, Ravi & Biyas). And most of all we need to scrutinize our, so called, politicians and political system. We need to stop the government from borrowing more, making more commissions and introduce some competence tests/exams for candidates of the national and provincial assemblies. As well as some clear criteria for the senate members. So that our future political leadership can (nationally and internationally) watch Pakistan's national interest and look after our lives better!!!.
(The author is a practicing lawyer in England and can be found/followed on twitter @ Malik M Javed Aslam)