Privatisation, downsizing and pension reforms
Pension reforms, downsizing and contractual government employment part of restructuring
Present PTI
Government contrary to its promises made to the people of Pakistan before the
elections, is going to decisively attack the working class rights on the dictates
of International Imperialist financial institutions. The PTI government is
planning to reduce the retirement age from sixty (60) years to fifty five (55) and
also thinking to alter the service structure 1973 to end the pension rights of
the government servants and employees of the public sector.
A committee
was formed by the PTI government under the chairmanship of former Governor
State Bank of Pakistan Dr Ishrat Hussain to reform the civil service. It was
generally believed that this committee will propose the recommendations to
reform the civil service to make it more efficient and focused on service delivery
to the people. But now media reports are coming out that the government wants
to reform the whole civil state sector excluding the military, paramilitary and
police. It seems that government wants to introduce sweeping reforms in the
public sector.
The
government wants to cut down the size of public sector and government. The
total strength of federal government employees is 581,240 including 32,334
female employees and 16,711 non-Muslim employees, says the Establishment
Division Report 2017-18. The report revealed that sanctioned posts are 660,657
against the filled seats of 581,240. The number of vacant posts is 79,417. The
number of female employees is only 32,334 out of total strength. The
distribution of actual strength shows that a small share of 4.63% is occupied
by the officers working in basic scales 17-22, whereas 95.37% is occupied by
employees working in basic scales 1-16, which is a very large share in the
total number of Federal Government civil servants. The number of employees belonging to
Occupational Groups is 6,298. The government already slashed 80,000 permanent
seats in the federal government few weeks ago.
There are
around 2.7 million government employees working for provincial governments. There is accurate data available for federal
employees but it is difficult to find accurate data on provincial governments.
Dr Ishrat
Hussain made his intentions clear and said that “We have the regular retirement
policy in addition to the early retirement policy, which has been notified.
Pension, he said, is a bomb that is going to explode in the future, because our
pension bill is just going up and up every year. In fact, our pension bill is
now more than our salary bill. We want to go the defined-contribution
mechanism, as identified after actuarial analyses during my time as the
Chairman of Pay and Pension Commission in 2010-11. The government has appointed
a Pay and Pension Commission, which would present recommendations for pension
reform moving away from pay as you go to Defined Contribution and creating a
Pension Fund. This would not only save the government from future fiscal burden
but also help in deepening the capital markets in Pakistan.”
For achieving this anti workers goals, PTI
Government has constituted three different Committees. The First Committee is
supposed to prepare the proposals for the workers, working from scale one to
sixteen (01 to 16), second committee to prepare the proposals from scale
seventeen to nineteen (17 to 19) and third Committee from twenty to twenty to
twenty two (20 to 22).
It's obvious
that every government whether democratic or dictatorships, since 1977, when
second elected government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was overthrown by General Zia
and imposed Marshall law, made efforts to implement the neo-liberal economic
policies in Pakistan on the dictations of World Bank and IMF.
One should
know that in the period of 1970s, all major private industries and utilities
were put under the public ownership under the nationalization program by the
first PPP government led by Z.A Bhutto.
General Zia
dictatorship set up a commission for leveling the field for privatization and
initially could return the Ittefaq foundries only, to Mian Sharif, Father
of Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif. General Zia regime also privatised the state
owned hotel chain Intercontinental’s now known as Pearl continental hotels. After
the death of General Zia in a plane crash, when elections were also held and
PPP had won the elections but government was not handed over to Benazir
Bhutto yet, some cabinet ministers of Zia dictatorship, made an
unconstitutional deal with IMF / World Bank bonding future Governments to
privatization of the national assets which wasn't their domain at that stage.
Unfortunately
PPP government led by Benazir Bhutto could not defend its fundamental legacy of
nationalization and floated 10% Shares of PIA through stock market in 1988 but
she could not privatize any major institution. PPP remained swinging like
pendulum between both the economic policies and could not prove itself with any
Independent economic policy at later stages unlike its fundamental legacy which
it had in 1970s.
Pace of
privatization was picked up after creation of PC.5 when Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif launched a privatization program on 22nd January 1991. Nawaz Sharif
regime did so much massive privatization of national assets, that Kaiser
Bengali the famous Pakistani economist called it the "the Juma
Bazaar" of privatization. Resultantly the national wealth fell into the
hands of big business oligarchs and the wealth gap increased dramatically in
1990s.
The second intensified privatization program was launched in 2001-2
during the Musharraf regime under the supervision of finance minister and later
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz who put 80%-90% industries, banking and other
sectors under the management of the Private ownership till the end of 2007. KESC
and PTCL were also privatised during that period. Both Nawaz Sharif and General
Musharaf did massive privatisation in their respective tenures.
Unfortunately
this is the final phase of privatization of left over national assets, going on
under the PTI regime, which is not only going to privatize the left over
national institutions but at the same time, it's going to further attack the
term and conditions of the workers and finally going to demolish the service
structure of 1973. PTI regime has already abolished thousands of vacant posts
and it's further planning to launch temporary employment policy for future in
which hiring will be made on contractual basis and complete hire and fire
Rights will be given to the owners of the companies. It's quite obvious that
with such policies, there will be no Trade Unions Rights for working people of
this country. This may be the time for working class and Trade Union leadership
of this country for which it is said now or never and this is the time for PPP
which may have the last opportunity for its revival and to connect with
the working class and other progressive forces to move ahead united with clear
alternative and pro-people economic policy against the neoliberal economic
policies.
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