In times the Sharif Brothers (Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif) did way better than others. They have been able to start and/or complete some very important projects which helped the people of Pakistan. Motorways, no doubt about it that all those Motorways planned by Nawaz Sharif helped Pakistanis and reduced traveling times. Other recent project are all about the transportation. Lots of roads being renewed. Even the metros, whatever we say, but on end of day people are traveling on those metros and getting the benefit.
In current tenure again they are going very good with infrastructure projects but same is point where we clearly see the problem. They put too much attention to infrastructure, mainly the transportation. Their priorities are not correct, the main things they need to put attention are being ignored.
I will spell out some priorities which they should really have in this point of time
Police Reforms:
This is very much necessary. Our police is not up to the mark, there are millions of things wrong with them. They are ill equipped, they have lots of bribe getting bad fishes in them, they do not operate on international standards by far, they are not paid well, they are not facilitated well and more over best of police resources are assigned to protocols and VIP duties, mainly providing the security to people in power.
What I recommend is, without further delay full attention needs to be put on Pakistan Police. When I say police I am talking about the police in all provinces and the capital. A million things need to be fixed in our police, some of them can be as follows.
- Corruption – Biggest issue is corruption and bribe culture within our police. This is big issue know to every Pakistani. For this purpose new people need to be hired in same police department, who work on same police ranks, but main purpose of them being in department should be keep the eyes on other policemen around. They should secretly report to some other body which have sole purpose of finishing all the corruption from police department.
- Salaries and Perks – Police men work round the clock, they can be called anytime and there is nothing like off time for them. But what they are payed is very less as compared to their job requirements. Same is the reason which stops lots of well educated and worthy individuals from joining the department. So salaries of all police individuals need to be raised way above the minimum salary of Pakistan. They are supposed to do very important job of protecting people, so they must be payed very well.
Additionally they deserve further perks like pick and drop etc. I have seen lots waiting on roads for lift or using the public transport. Specially late nights there are not options they have other than taking lift from work to home.
- Resources Allocation – This is very important aspect, all the good resources are allocated to VIP protocols and the vehicle which are supposed to be involved in chasing the thieves and violators are in very bad condition, mostly very old. Other than the capital, mostly police is relying on those Toyota Hilux models right from the stone age. In most cities of Punjab and other provinces, police does not have any “CARS” to chase the thieves.
Health
If you see the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz’s (PMLN) Manifesto for 2013 elections, it also correctly spells out the health issue in Pakistan. But later after coming into the power, in my opinion, not much was done in this regard. The problem is not only about the lack of facilities, the bigger problem is of lack of maintenance of current facilities as well as the behaviors of officials to towards their jobs. In government hospitals even if some equipment is available, it largely happens, when you visit, you will be told that certain machine is not in working condition. Not saying this out of nothing, happened to me.
Plus than there is problem of doctors and other staff, they just don’t do the job like they should. Well, most of them. The main issue is of lack of check and balance on the hospital staff. There is just no one to keep and eye on daily operations. Hospital staff many times have been seen involved in selling those free hospital medicines out in the market.
Energy Crisis
One very important thing Pakistan need to put full attention is shortage of energy and problems like Load Shedding of electricity. No we are NOT incapable of generating the enough electricity but here again problem of lack of management comes. Mostly we have problems like circular debt, then recovery of bills and finally line losses. We have generation capacity of over 23 Giga Watts from which about 18 Giga Watts could easily be generated anytime in the year. But no, all those plants are never run together.
Sharif brothers need to put some more attention to this issue. Although, they claim to get rid of electricity load shedding issue once and for all in the start of 2018 but that does not match to their claims which they had made in their election campaign more than three years ago. In campaign I heard Shahbaz Sharif giving many different timelines for solution of electricity problem, which ranged from 6 months to 2.5 years. But here we are well passed three years and we are being offered the solution of all electricity problems by the start of 2018.
When it comes to energy, the electricity is not the sole issue of Pakistan, the Natural Gas also is. In this regard, government finally after three years of coming into power have been able to do some Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) import contracts. The situation up till now was worse. But lets see if these contracts really pay off, and that we will definitely know in peak Gas usage season, I mean winters.
Timely provision of Justice
One very big problem people of Pakistan are facing is of very slow judicial system. When someone contacts a court for justice in a certain matter, they have to sometimes wait for years more than those of a life time and then I have seen the children of people fighting same cases in courts. In most cases our judicial system does not have a fast solution. Slow justice is no justice in my opinion.
And Sharifs’ led PMLN party’s manifesto for 2013 elections realizes this issue and they had a plan to implement a methodology to deal with most cases within a year at most. But unfortunately till now nothing have changed yet. Hope Sharif deal with all this soon.
There is whole lot of other stuff which I would have mentioned here for Sharifs to put attention on along with roads, but I leave rest to them and hope they will deal with some other real problems to along with all the good work they have been and are doing in terms of building roads.
Do give your input as well in comments section below. Feel free to share this with friends.