We have 404 vacancies for Town Managers to recover stolen wealth: Any takers? By Fayyaz Baqir

Government of Pakistan suffers from underperformance at 4 levels. One, Pakistan does not allocate higher budget for health and education of people due to low tax to GDP ratio. Pakistan’s citizens spend twice the size of government’s budget for social development on welfare activities. Some highly publicized welfare budget projects run on foreign loans. This is cheap politics and puts crushing burden on the backs of poor. Two, almost half of the budget allocated for social sector has not been spent most of the time during past 75years. Various line departments start haphazardly spending the budget in the last two months of the fiscal year to avoid budget cuts in the next fiscal year. Three, the meagre budget spent in social sector is not fully utilized and it gives birth to ghost schools, and health centers. Four, wherever the functioning schools, basic health units, and water and sanitation facilities exists, serious underperformance issues are encountered. Due to under or nonperformance of these basic services hundreds of millions of dollars of investment is lost. This is the wealth stolen from public due to substandard work, poor upkeep and maintenance, lack of supervision and absenteeism of employees. These services are needed by the citizens on daily basis, and they exist in the immediate vicinity of their users. Recovering this stolen wealth and making it functional is first and foremost the responsibility of users. No Prime Minister, Chief Minister or elected representative can do this from the top. Citizens must own their government, their service providing institutions and investment in infrastructure and provision of services paid by them as tax payers. This is also the easiest battle to win because it is local, and least cost, and this the turf where their power counts more than anywhere else. Recovering this stolen wealth can be done at Tehsil/Town level or in case of limited capacity at Union Council level. We have 404 Tehsil/Town governments and 6000 Union Councils. We have many young and capable people looking for jobs, interested in community services and recovering the looted money. Union Council or Town is where they can start. The question that arises is why it is not happening.
Young people need to learn the art of organizing communities, engaging with the government, and finding the technical solutions for solving local problems. There are models and teachers available to guide our youth. Young people can generate resources to pay for their work after receiving training and gaining experience. Why is it not happening? Our youth, like our mainstream media, academics and politicians is not aware of the treasure in its backyard. We talk of foreign loans going to the coffers of the rich and adding to our national debt. We don’t know that one our rural development program doubled the income of 100,000 families living in the most treacherous mountain region in the world in 10 years. This program was expanded to South Asia with the support of UNDP and the World Bank. Our expert led the world’s largest poverty alleviation and South-South cooperation program, having the honor of guiding Indians how to alleviate poverty. We have benefitted from the creativity of a bright, courageous, and insightful civil servant who started the program for regularizing ownership of shelter for 11 million people of Karachi living in informal settlements (Katchi Abadis). Here is an officer who refused to use World Banks funding to run this program. We have on ground a sanitation system serving a population of 1 million in one of the largest Katchi Abadis in Pakistan. We have examples of people restoring dysfunctional water and sanitation services, managing change in government schools, and restoring and improving community health units. We have world’s first and largest interest free micro credit program running without a single penny from any official donor. Our community development experts have been recognized by rest of the world for their trail blazing work in community service and judicious use of resources. In the past years 14 Pakistanis have received Ramon Magsaysay award for their outstanding work. This award is known as the Nobel Prize of Asia.
The question is why we spend more energy in cursing what we don’t have and less on learning from and expanding what we have. We glorify complaining about failure as ‘resistance’ , political ‘correctness’ and struggle but have a low opinion of successes we have achieved. Political correctness is equated with making fiery speeches, making larger than life promises, using dramatic language and recycling borrowed political ideas. We have solutions for our problems in our backyard, and we have developed the methodology to find solutions for the problems not yet resolved. The change needs to begin at Union Council and Tehsil level. It will subsequently consolidate at national level. We are looking for 404 candidates for town mangers in the first stage. Are there any takers?