PTIs new Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Posted on 2013-07-02 08:47:11

As was expected the TTP has not yet come to terms with its violent agenda and continued its subversive activities throughout Pakistan including K.P. which has always been its easy and nearest target. In absence of peace and security, the PTI led provincial coalition government will find it hard to implement its reforms agenda and to give a new look to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where the reforms and benefits emanating there from must be visible and feel able by common man to pave way for the PTIs emergence at federal level in the future or at the least to further consolidate its status in the province for which it has five long years to work. The Provincial health minister has announced that certain costly tests/examinations like MRI, CT SCAN and X-rays will be done free of cost in big hospitals of the province on emergency basis. This indeed is a pro-poor decision which will certainly be appreciated by people of the province. This is a decision worth following by other provinces too. The people of Pakhtoonkhwa are the poorest in the entire country, poorer even than Balochistan as per capita income and therefore they deserve concessions and facilities from the government to give them sense of share and respect and to make them cooperative with the leaderships agenda of reforms. The treatment has become a costly affair for the poor populace in public sector hospitals in big and small cities and the basic health centers and units-all of them give a deserted look. Because of lack of standard and reliable hospitals, the indifferent attitude of doctors in those facilities, there is great rush of miserable and poor patients at private doctors clinic in evenings where they are subjected to exorbitant examination fee, costly laboratory tests in almost sub-standard laboratories usually owned by doctors themselves or their related persons. The mad speed with which a patient is examined by a kind hearted doctor makes the entire process of treatment irresponsible and exploitative in nature. To correct all this mismanagement in public and private health outlets appears to be difficult task, nevertheless to make a breakthrough in the black-hole of greed, corruption and exploitation may not be a lesser achievement as there are numerous ways available to them to deceive patients. A doctor charged twenty thousand from a poor woman for plastering her fractured knee for which he should have charged not more than six thousand. Half the amount was returned to the lady after someones intervention. The provincial government of K.P. has announced the formation of a number of working groups for the implementation of its reforms agenda in sectors of public peace and security, local government, health, education, citizens rights including right to information etc. In this connection it is suggested that PTIs government must abstain from implementing its agenda in haste just to prove its efficiency and scoring points. It must advance its agenda slowly and steadily and to take firm steps in order that the reforms become stable and meaningful as a lot of work is required to be done. For this purpose the working groups may also be entrusted with the monitoring to see and ensure that reforms are being implemented step by step and with proper attention.

In order to obtain quick results, the entire efforts to introduce reforms may go waste. The government should abstain from doing a lot of work in short time but rather should not stop working in the right direction until at the end of its tenure the party can proudly announce that look we have made a new Pakhtoonkhwa for you- the voters of the province. AS is commonly believed, to move and work in haste is the work of the devil. No doubt radical reforms are the need of the hour and people of the province have also voted for change but the expected reforms must be stable and effective from the outset.

These 90 days of PTI came to an end on August 31, so it is desirable to have a look what has been the performance in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Austerity in running the state affairs coupled with curbing the misuse of state resources by top government functionaries that had plagued the previous governments was a promise that the PTI had made to this nation. Barring the minimum security required, no minister, including the Chief Minister, in the KP government takes any protocol vehicles and staff during movement. The incident of state helicopter ride taken by the Chief Minister KP and followed by payment for the fuel used for the trip set the example for top political leadership and bureaucracy in the province that the PTI government would have zero tolerance for the misuse of scarce and precious state resources. No other incident of such nature was reported afterwards even by the most vigilant media.

A plan to commercialize state guesthouses to mitigate unnecessary government expenses is in the pipeline.

Elimination of corruption at top level was the target set by the PTI for the first 90 days of its government. The PTI achieved this target; suffice it to say that not a single scandal, not to speak of a mega one, has piped up in the watchful media with all media eyes set on the KP government on this count.

Nor has the PTI government left any chance of the surfacing of any corruption scandal in future by putting into operation the Right to Information (RTI) Ordinance which ranks 76th among 90 countries that have RTI laws including many of the so-called first world countries.

The KPs RTI law has scored 143 and is positioned at top global RTI rankings. Under the new law any citizen can make a request to the government on a simple paper or through an email, without any fee, requiring information about all government departments, the KP legislature,

chief ministers secretariat, governors secretariat, lower courts, and even to private bodies funded by government and private bodies providing public services.

The applicant under RTI Ordinance is not even required to disclose the reason for demanding such information. No more effective step for curbing corruption was imaginable when the typical measures of carrots with sticks and surprise raids followed by rather showy suspensions of functionaries by political lordships had miserably failed in the past.