Re: Imran Khan not in favour of cuts in Pakistan’s defence budget
The organizations were initiated by the military......
End of story. Military has no business doing business.
They serve a couple of purposes.
1. They were initiated as a way to streamline the transfer of military personnel from military to civilian life. A lot of military retirees are hired on contract jobs in these organizations, for a maximum of 3 years. ...
Military personnel get pension from civilian budget, plus lucrative jobs in these organizations. During the course of their services, the officer do get perks much greater than any other public service already. Sorry, but but 'maximum of 3 years' is not correct. I personally know several military retirees doing jobs that they are not qualified to do in organizations funded with public money. There is no comparable example in the world of military running such businesses.
- These organizations have earned a lot of money for the military, and that is because the strength of our military force is pretty large for obvious reasons, and their expenses are huge for the same reasons.
Give me unlimited funding and preferable access to resources and sales/services contracts, I'll give you 'profitable businesses.
- DHA project was started on the same lines as any other employee housing project, eg GOR, Railway housing, Wapda housing etc. Take a look at DHAs across the country and you will notice that they are all built far from the main cities. When Lahore DHA was being built, people used to mock it, saying they are building houses in the village...same was the case with Karachi. But after those places were cleaned up, populated, and secured,it was civilians, mostly politicians etc, who bought houses/plots in DHA at whatever price was asked for....They are the ones who are responsible for jacking up the price of real estate. And now that it has been jacked up, the military is blamed for usurping 'prime' land. Convenient timing i must say. Same is true for all 'resorts' and clubs
Sorry, but again I would not agree GOR, Railways Housing or Wapda Housing running commercial housing projects. It is okay as long as the limit the societies to their own employees and not run as commercial organizations. Give me unlimited funding, access to public land and ability to conveniently circumvent bureaucracy, I'll give you DHA.
You forget the fact that our civilian organizations and management have been rubbish, thanks to corruption from top to bottom. Military organizations have flourished because they are relatively cleaner, and run in a more streamlined way. There are bad apples every where, and armed forces are no exception, but the defence budget is not the reason Pakistan is in deep doo doo.
About Civilian organizations being corrupt, the government has no business doing business either. Most of them should be privatized to be run more efficiently.
It is not the budget that is my problem. My problem is what they do with the budget and do not allow civilian authorities to even audit the spending. This is disgusting, to say the least. How would you feel if a group of doctors start a fertilizer plant using the budget allocated for health and start employing doctors to run it?
and you don’t love them 
