Tag: bureaucrats

  • ’Four salary bonus’, PM Shehbaz is reportedly rewarding his staff

    ’Four salary bonus’, PM Shehbaz is reportedly rewarding his staff

    A few days before leaving for Washington to ask the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a new bailout package to avoid a default, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif approved a proposal to give up to four salaries in bonuses to his staff. He also asked his finance minister to concur with it.

    The PM is being faced with criticism that the policy to hand out such big awards to bureaucrats amidst such deeply serious economic conditions is against an austerity drive.

    Also, analysts are asking whether this move would bode well for the new IMF bailout package as the IMF discourages bloated government expenditures.

    The rewards were approved for staff officers because of ‘their extraordinary efforts in the completion of tasks’, according to the Express Tribune.

    More importantly, the cost for these bonuses will be paid to these government servants by taking loans from banks at a 23 per cent interest rate.

  • ‘Rethink and reimagine Pakistan’: Politicians, bureaucrats call for political consensus

    Former Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar has announced that he along with a group of politicians and bureaucrats, will be organising a series of seminars across Pakistan aimed at bringing about a “political consensus for restructuring the governance structures of Pakistan”.

    Former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, former Finance Minister Miftah Ismail, Fawad Hasan Fawad, Asad Ali Shah, Haji Lashkari Raisini, Mir Humayun Kurd, Khawaja Mohammad Hoti, along with others, will be part of this effort to create political consensus.

    Khokhar tweeted, “In a nonpartisan effort, I have been talking to friends & colleagues about the current economic, political and social crisis of Pakistan which are now striking at the core foundations of the state and the society.”

    “At the same time individual and collective rights are under severe stress causing a widespread dissatisfaction of people across the regional and ethnic divides in Pakistan. These trying times require us to “rethink” or “reimagine” Pakistan.”

    Talking to The News, Khokar said, “From political uncertainty to economic meltdown to polarisation in society that has reached dangerous levels of intolerance, Pakistan is not facing just one crisis but multiple crises at the same time. Today we are at a juncture where we are actually at a ‘naazuk morr’ — a phrase that we always hear but only when powerful quarters don’t want something to be talked about”.

    Ismail too took to Twitter and said, ” I and many other colleagues are trying to bring about a national consensus on major issues. Thus we are starting with holding seminars across Pakistan.”