Pakistan Institute of Development Economics

Islamabad.

Economic and finance (morning)

Seminar summary
Submitted by:
Rubab Khan
 HUMMAN RESOURCES
AND LEADERSHIR CHALLENGES IN PAKISTAN
TUESDAY 12 MAY 2020

Panelist
DR Khurram Tariq,( CEO, Kay &Emms)
Sheikh Imran-ul-Haque, Former MD & CEO PSO
Tahir jawed( CEO Hub Power Serviced Ltd)
Amjad Iqbal , (EVP Talent Management & Culture , PTCL)
 Summary
Pakistan is the 5th most populated country in the world. On the other hand it’s faced serious

headwinds in finding good quality people, particularly in the public sector. This is a classic case

of quantity verses quality which gives birth to various socio-economic problems, including

unemployment (thus, law and order), shrinking of professional & trained work-force, etc. The

situation becomes more complicated when we look at the population demographics of Pakistan:

43% of the population under the age of 15 years (and 16 to 64 years of age: 53%) with a

questionable figures of official literacy rates of 58% and unemployment rate of ~6%, leaves

Pakistan still with big numbers of educated people without jobs. Whilst sociological challenges

of these facts deserve a full discussion and thesis; however, this write-up is confined to cover this

dilemma in the context of human resource availability for public sector in Pakistan.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, has made a list of

world’s most educated countries. Canada is the most educated country; second most educated

nation is Japan and third educated country is Israel. According to this survey the education rate

of Pakistan is very low. Good professionals in Pakistan remains a rarity, fundamentally due to

quality of education supplemented by substantial brain-drain over the years owing to lack of

enough attractive opportunities within the country and/ or limited exposure and grooming

circumstances for local professionals. Whatever the case maybe but the situation stays grim on

the valuable professional’s front.

Education has not been spared either, resulted in compromise over the available professionals,

both in public as well as private sectors. This situation is, however, totally precipitated in the

public sector which was further aggravated due to faulty compensation and invisible merit-
oriented culture and performance management system. Furthermore, current environment in the

Government is keeping the professionals away and the good quality civil servants are most

reluctant to take decisions in the day-to-day workings, let alone bold ones required for some

principle changes. The World Bank’s most relevant index, in this context, is “Government

Effectiveness” which captures perceptions of the quality of public services, the quality of the

civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy

formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government's commitment to such

policies. This makes it very apparent that the provision of satisfactory personnel is the important

thing problem and is a real crisis that the Government is confronted with at present and this shall

be addressed ahead of something else to enhance the Government’s effectiveness, shipping for

the masses and to adopt the plenty wanted structural reforms, to in the long run help raise

hundreds out of the poverty line.

One being, and perhaps most importantly, “indemnifying the selection-makers” against genuine

expert/ business judgement calls. There ought to be a manner in-area wherein accusation against

any public servant shall both be cleared via the related regulator (in the case of regulated frame

corporates) and/ or the highest authority inside the Government. To assist them, the Government

may also don't forget putting-up a commission of serving excessive-courtroom and/ or excellent-

court judges in order to compare every request received from regulation enforcement business

enterprise for investigation in opposition to any civil servant for misconduct. This will create

some form of buffer (mitigate harassment) and encourage confidence in opposition to the public

servants to make legitimate aggressive choices inside the first-class hobby of the state. In

addition to this, exclusive courts, like banking courts, maybe introduced which might straight

away be available to public servants for hearing their plea, in the event that they’re charged for
wrongdoing, and to dispense justice on priority. There can also be a bad responsibility element to

be introduced whereby on the end if it's miles demonstrated that the indictment became frivolous

then the people worried in fake allegations and research will be taken to project. These

amendments are required in regulation and maybe given felony cover through an act of

parliament.

Questions

Q1: Do We Really Demand Leadership?

Q2: Are Public and private institutions are same in this regard?

Q3: Why Eco system is required in raising requisite leadership?

Q4: What is low hanging and what needs to be strategically managed with regard to leadership

management in public and private sector?