Lets do something for our country

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
21

Oh there are glaring differences between the two forces.

I don't know what is the criteria being used in selecting and recruiting young people for the police force. Thats one of the most important factor affecting the whole organisation. When there is a minimum qualification criterion, rigourous selection procedure, proper training, adequate salaries that wuld complement the amount of work they do and the way they risk their lives; I believe then we can atleast compare the two.
I wonder what sort of training they are given. In Pakistan people think twice before going to a police station. Do you ever feel safe standing close to a police mobile? I for one DON'T. I have yet to see any respect in their eyes for women or for that matter any man. But you cannot entirly blame them. Most of the people join police force to get the easy way out because they know that even if they won't be adequately paid, there are many other ways within the system to make qucik money. Hence, they start exploiting their position and the authority they are given to maintain law and order to their own benifit.

22

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by irem: *
oho itna rola kyun dala hoa hae logo

just make me the prime minister, mein mulk ka boht bhala karoon gi

mulk ka naheen to apna to kar hi loon gi
[/QUOTE]

Haan apko bhi Jaddah main baith kar muft ki rotiyaan khani hain kia :D

Minerva Technically there is not much differecne.

Similarities

  1. Both are inadequately paid.
  2. Both perform their duties in harsh conditions.
  3. Education level is almost same
  4. Traing is similar to some extent
  5. Selection criteria is too some what similar.( sifarish and kinship etc)
  6. Both get same kind of financial aid from dept in case of permanet injury or death.

** Reasons for different level of commitment, honesty, Attitude**

  1. Army maintain much higher level of discipline and accountability at lower level (than police)
  2. Army jawan live mostly in cantonment area with limited interaction with civilian thus few opportunities for corruption
  3. Army provide necessities of living at subsidised rate and on credit with no mark-up, through CSD (canteen store dept). Also eating in mess and living in barracks, army jawans can save big portion of salaries. But in police they dont get these benefits.
  4. People generally see army as a their gurdians and as they dont have much interaction with them, so generally are in good books.( Talking about soldiers not generals :p )
23

I see not many people are interested in solutions. Well thats nothing new, most of us (95% )are good for pointing out all the evils, malpractices, in-efficiencies and never ending problems in all walks of life in our society.

But when asked for solutions, we think that either it is not our job or we dont have time or it wont make any change. Anyway, I am not discouraged not dismayed :slight_smile: Chill out and relax in the comfort of your homes and enjoy life :jhanda:

Back to topic…

I thought about it and considering the limitations of govt. it is quite difficult , but nevertheless.

1. Revenue generation

Police is a publice service dept and not an earning body. So all the funds come from govt’s kitty. And govt can not afford to spend more beyond a certain limit. Salaries of lower level officers are in-sufficient, which make them do corrution to make a living.
There can be some way to make some revenue for a police station…

If a police station recovers some stolen goods (cars, jewlery, cash etc), then govt should reward that police station in form of certain percentage of market value of that thing. And the owner should be requested to donate some percentage also

For Example A formula like this.

5.0% for recoverd goods amounting Rs.50,000 to 100,000
2.5% for recoverd goods amounting Rs.100,000 to 1,000,000
0.85% for recoverd goods amounting Rs.1,000,000 and beyond.

The owner of the recovered item be requested to donate according to that formula although it may not be compulsary. If owner want to give less or more than he can do so. If by good luck owner wants to donate more, then the govt. should match that amount if it does not exceed the % in next slab

to be conitued…

24

** Monthly, quaterly and yearly audit of funds for every Police station**

People dont trust police to solve their problem or to get justice. So clearly people wont give them any money. So to make things better, every police station’ s bank account should be audited. Both funds raised and expenditure be monitored and made public in quaterly statement from auditing firm. and that statement will be displayed at the notice board (or some prominent place)of police station.

It wont cost much, as for monthly audit it will take 3,4 days and quaterly will take a week maximum.

** Use of generated funds**

  1. 60 % of these funds should be divided among the staff of that police station, either equally or by some formula, After audit of quaterly accounts

  2. 10 % should be utilised to improve the facilities in police station like better furniture, cold n warm water machines and overall tidiness.

  3. 10 % should go to police employee welfare fund, ( to maintain susidesed shop for police empoyees )

  4. 10 % should go to a fund, from which lower ranked officers and jawan can draw loan without markup.

Grading of police station on basis crime reported and case solved

Professional evaluation of police stations on the basis of performance. Coputerization of data (not much difficult due to lower prices of hardware and its already in process ).

Complaints through emails, fax and telephone

All police stations should paste these in a prominent places. Complaints against police station and officer should directly affect their grading.

Crime Data is available

here

25

CR , there maybe many similarities but still there are a lot of differnces too. The soldiers of Pakistan army from top ranking offcials to the jawans are instilled with this unique sense of duty, responsibility and a feeling of belonging to a larger whole. Maybe its because of the command and control system within the armed services and the check and balance system. I am not saying that the people from armed forces are godforbid infallible and we know of some scandals of the army and the navy's top ranking offcials being involved in receiving huge commissions in various deals. But still corruption is not rampant as it is in the police force and still majority of people have high regard for the army as compared to the police.

p.s: I read the reasons after I have written post. :D So, call it duplicity of efforts or great minds thinking on the same lines.

26

I think the contention that corruption will always be present is sort of a bad way to start. Corruption spoils the rule of law. Basic honesty by civil servants must be a prerequisite to every one believing that they will be treated fairly and honestly.

When the courts are corrupt and the public servants are corrupt, then people will act outside the law, with the belief that laws are optional. Can this be done? Consider the following. An undercover television show gave 20 wallets to New York street cops. 20 More in LA. A notation was made of all of the contents of the wallet, including cash. How much money do you think was missing? Read on:

The Results

Of the 20 Los Angeles police officers who were given wallets and purses, every single one turned in the wallet and the money. Not a penny was missing from the wallets, which were given to officers of all races, throughout the city.

“Police officers have only one legacy and that’s their integrity, their honesty,” says Parks. “Their word means a lot … and people believe in that badge and what it represents.”

But Parks was upset to learn that in three instances, Los Angles police officers refused to take the wallets in the first place, saying it was inconvenient for them.

“Part of the job is to service the public,” he says. “That property could be part of a crime, it could be somebody’s valuables. It’s our expectation that they would take it.”

And for all that has been written and said about the shortcomings of the NYPD, New York’s police officers passed the integrity test with flying colors.

“The reality is that all 20 [wallets] came back,” says Kerik. “It basically shows that our integrity standards are very high and the cops are doing their job. And it’s something we’re very proud of.”
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/primetime/2020/PrimeTime_010517_wallets1.html

27

The top leadership will have to set the example of austerity. This is the first thing. In this way people will think of caring for others, which is the Islamic way.

Lets strat a campaign that the President, PM, Ministers.....their chamchas, civil servants , the armed forces top brass....get rid of their Mercedez and Lexus. The need to show they really care and set an example. Once these expensive cars are sold we can make a start by spending this money on building schools, providing free education and health.

Does anybody know that the non-developemnt expenditure of Pakistan is way above teh development expenditure. So there lies the problem. Hubb al-Maal.

With all that money wastage on unncessary things, we can think of some betterment in all sectors that need them. Who would want to be good and save the country's precisios recources when they know that their leadership is living in luxury.

28

Ohioguy Thanks for your input.

Every country has different set of problems. It is great that LA cops are honest but it wont make anything better for us, because ours are not(mostly).

US had a problem of racial discrimination and hatred for Black people. You tried for decades, by educating people and making proper lagislation to solve the problem. We also have to do some thing about our problems.

Islamabad You are saying it alright. But skipping step 1,2,3 and telling the step 4.

[quote]
Lets strat a campaign that the President, PM, Ministers.....their chamchas, civil servants , the armed forces top brass....get rid of their Mercedez and Lexus. The need to show they really care and set an example. Once these expensive cars are sold we can make a start by spending this money on building schools, providing free education and health.
[/quote]

^
There are already hundreds of Ghost schools , doctors un-willing to serve in rural areas. so on and so forth.
All this needs awareness, and it comes with education. The auditor general of pakistan every year presents in the National assembly the summary of funds wasted or misused in all federal deptments with all the minute details. But nothing happens. Because lack of awareness.

29

ok- so the current point you have raised is the police force.

The police force in any country is exposed to the worst of society and therefore is very prone to be affected by all this. So you have corruption in every police dept in the world. But then in most developed countries there is a check on the police force (like internal affairs in the US). Also in developed countries, the pay in the police is very good so there is not really a need to be corrupt.

In Pakistan, I would take the following steps to improve the police force (not necessarily in this order)

  1. Modify the grading system to make ASI onwards similar to army commissioned officers. Give them the same pay & benefits as the army and similar recruitment method and training. Increase the number of senior officers (SP + ) to reduce the authority of these grades. Introduce accountability & monitoring systems of officers and police stations.

  2. Increase pay of Jawaans and give them similar benefits as army.

  3. Introduce a monitoring force of the police force by picking people from the army and the police force. These monitoring cells will secretly monitor the performance of all police stations and handle inquiries. There will be statistics made and published in the national papers of worst performing police stations.

  4. In order to generate revenue for the police, have a no tolerance system for traffic violations and fine the public heavily !! Also introduce a tax for all home owners of a fixed sum that is related to the size of the plot.

  5. The local government will annually present the expenditure of the local tax to the residents. The tax paying residents will be funding the police force so the police will be accountable to the locals- maybe through a board of governors consisting of local professionals such as doctors, teachers etc.

I know it is all idealistic but my proposals are kind of practical if there is a willing leader (like myself!!).

30

Khattana Thanks for participation. You have very valid and practical ideas.

I initally thought that we would come up with many ideas for betterment and then we can select the best one, draft a proposal and send to related ministries and higher authorities via post. Nevertheless I will still try to do the same. :)

For undertaking any project we need to check its feasibility. And quite frankly our govt wont even consider any proposal which is beyond its current alocated resouces for that specific area.

I am trying to gather some data to check the cost and effect of my proposal for an avg city(medium size) in pakistan.

For the time being Lets disscuss
How to improve our literacy rate.

I thought a lot about it, and after wasting some papers and killing thousands of my innocent brain cells, :D I realized it is a very complicated and gigantic problem.

The reason in one word is 'poverty'

Let me breifly put some of the reasons for high ratio of Illiteracy in urban areas as well as rural areas in Pakistan.

Urban Legends

Generally high rate of literacy in cities then villages. But still it is mostly around 50% ~ 60%. and it is bad.
Lot of poor people who can afford, do make their children go to school.
Be it till grade 5(primary), 8 or matric.

Child labour
Many family who live bellow or around poverty line can not afford the luxury of education. Because it will deprive them of an earning body. So they send the child to some workshop, roadside resturants etc to start earning after some months training. And for them, having 7 ~ 15 children is normal, as they wont have to feed them for logner.

Rural problems:
1. Inadiquite facilities i.e schools, staff, long ditance etc
2. Wadera, Chohdry culture tries to keep people illiterate so that they can be easily ruled and their monarchy ramains intact for generations.
3. Extreme poverty , makes people slaves, working on jageerdar's farms and living bellow poverty line, does not give them any chance to make their children educated.

31

I think you have started a good thread- shame not many takers on your thread so far.

On literacy, I would make the following points:

Education is a very long term investment for anyone & especially for poor people. Unfortunately everyone that goes to school for over 10 years expects to get a decent job at the end of it but in Pakistan, it is not possible for most young people to get a job. So for a poor family, it is better to send their children to learn skills as apprentices with car mechanics etc.

Is there a real need for everyone to be educated if the economy cannot utilise their skills? It seems like the ones who get a decent education end up going abroad anyway !! I think the drive has to be to improve the quality of education , not quantity. And to stimulate the economy to provide jobs to the well educated "exiles".

So I would take the following steps to improve the situation:

  1. Drastically change the education system. Have a 3 tier educational system: level 1 for basic literacy which would be a 2 year programme for all illiterates (adults) and would be compulsary for all who do not go to school. Level 2 upto Matric which would be at a similar standard to FSc / A Levels/ US High School Graduation. It should be flexible enough to allow most people to pass but to allow high flyers to shine as well. Level 3 is higher education which should be provided only to the top 2% of the population and should be made very tough to get into and the standard should be world class.

  2. Level 1 will be most difficult to implement. My suggestion would be that all matriculates (or graduates) after finishing full time education would have to do 1 or 2 years "national service" in which they have to educate people in their area. This service would be compulsary and they would get a nominal pay for this. The "students" of this peogramme would also get a scholarship to make up for loss of earnings.

  3. Level 2 would be the minimum standard to get any govt job. This would be a fairly high standard (world class) and at the same time easy to pass. The Grade A&B students would be able to go on to graduation at colleges / universities. This new matric std would also replace FSc. a student would normally be 17/18 at matriculation. For those who cannot go onto graduation, there will be technical colleges to study technical skills and also to go onto professions such as nursing, primary school teaching etc.

  4. Level 3 would be graduation. Admission is based on merit and you would do a degree in one subject. a general degree in a 3 yr course with 1st year on common subjects, 2nd & 3rd year specialising. Eng would be a 4 year course and medicine 5yr. The total numbers would be reduced to be in line with actual demand in the workplace and to improve stds.

  5. Private sector would be encouraged to carry out training for Level 2 & 3 students through incentives.

  6. Funding for all this will have to come from the state by reducing defence budget.

I could say a lot more but I am bored now !!

32

You have nice suggestions. We may not need to overhaul the system to implement these changes. But situation is quite gloomy in some parts of our country.

In my view, some areas of our country are dire need of attention.

Take for example

District Tharpakar -- Sindh province

Hardcore realities :

Area : 4,791,025 acres.

**literacy (male) : 28.33 %
literacy (female) : 6.91 %

literacy rate(combined) : 18.75 % **

Number of schools : 1753

Enrolment : 143,940 (of whom 90,103 are boys and 53,837 are girls).

Standard of living : 80% population lives bellow poverty line

Now comes the tricky part

Around 118 posts of gazetted officers and 51 non-gazetted officers are lying vacant. !!

Sadly situation is similar in my parts of our homeland.

I did some calculation and according to above ^ calculations on avg 83 student are enlorled in 1 school, which indicates that around one third of these are ghost schools !!

What can be done in this situation :(

33

Code-red!
awsome thread! going great! :k:

34

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Code_Red: *
You have nice suggestions. We may not need to overhaul the system to implement these changes. But situation is quite gloomy in some parts of our country.

In my view, some areas of our country are dire need of attention.

Take for example

District Tharpakar -- Sindh province

Hardcore realities :

Area : 4,791,025 acres.

**literacy (male) : 28.33 %
literacy (female) : 6.91 %

literacy rate(combined) : 18.75 % **

Number of schools : 1753

Enrolment : 143,940 (of whom 90,103 are boys and 53,837 are girls).

Standard of living : 80% population lives bellow poverty line

Now comes the tricky part

Around 118 posts of gazetted officers and 51 non-gazetted officers are lying vacant. !!

Sadly situation is similar in my parts of our homeland.

I did some calculation and according to above ^ calculations on avg 83 student are enlorled in 1 school, which indicates that around one third of these are ghost schools !!

What can be done in this situation :(
[/QUOTE]

Yes - but why pick on one of the most backward areas in the country? Even if these people were educated, what real value would they add to the economy? Why do we need a high literacy rate?

The only point of educating your public is if you can utilise their skills. I think we are better off improving the quality of our education and by educating the brightest to a very high level, use them to stimulate the economy. Once we can provide jobs to all our graduates, then we will be able to sell "education" to the backward areas too.

35

[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Code_Red: *
**I initally thought that we would come up with many ideas for betterment and then we can select the best one, draft a proposal and send to related ministries and higher authorities via post. Nevertheless I will still try to do the same. : )*
[/QUOTE]

If you are still willing to do this, please count me in as one of your 'helpers'.

36

You are suggesting that we let our literacy rate same at 30% ?
This is not a single case. There are loads of backward area in pakistan where situation is similar

Improving quality of education is one thing and increasing literacy rate of masses is another. Lets not undermine the importance of later.

Not to mention ours is very shameful in this era, whereas, our neighbors are marching right ahead.

A spectacular march by Rajasthan

Census 2001 data show that in the last decade Rajasthan recorded the highest percentage increase in literacy among Indian States. The rate of improvement has been faster than the rest of India in the case of each of the ‘Bimaru’ States.

EDUCATION is one of the key inputs for economic growth and human development. Any economy, whether it is developing or developed, can flourish only when human resources have been developed to the fullest extent. An illiterate population faces many handicaps. During the 1990s the problem of illiteracy was particularly scute in the four States of the Hindi heartland - Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh - which have been given the derisive acronym of Bimaru. But, the latest statistics provided by the Census of India 2001 show that the rate of improvement has been faster in each of these States than in India as a whole.

**Rajasthan’s improvement in respect of literacy has been spectacular; in the last decade it has recorded the highest percentage increase in literacy rate among Indian States. Of particular interest are data concerning the inter-State and inter-district variations in the ratio of literates to the total population. A comparison of data with those of 1991 gives an insight into the variations, pace, emphasis and progress in this area.

The percentage increase in total literacy and male literacy in the 1981-91 decade in Rajasthan was similar to the all-India increase, but in the case of female literacy it was lower than the all-India increase. However, Census 2001 shows that in the last decade the percentage increase in total literacy in the State has far exceeded the all-India average.

The number of literates aged seven and above has risen by 22.45 percentage points in Rajasthan against an all-India increase of 13.17 percentage points. Its literacy rate in 2001 has jumped to 61.03 per cent in 2001 from 38.55 in 1991, though it is yet lower than the all-India average of 65.38. **

link
stats

37

[quote]

I initally thought that we would come up with many ideas for betterment and then we can select the best one, draft a proposal and send to related ministries and higher authorities via post. Nevertheless I will still try to do the same. : )

[/quote]

code_red, you seem to have ideas, you seem to have the will. perhaps instead of going it alone, you could join one of a number of groups aiming at brainstorming reform, social/political/(particularly)education.

one such group, that I know has very intelligent/qualified people thinking all the time (myself a spectator mostly), and that has some contacts at the higher level is vttp. "virtual think tank pakistan". they have naming problems.

while MOST of their activities involve discussions and whatnot, there is a core group that actually produces policy recommendations and stuff along those lines for the government. you might have trouble, as an individual, reaching the ears of higher ups..

[quote]

A policy memorandum on Higher Education Reform written on the request of Drs. Atta ur Rehman and Sohail Naqvi critically analyzing the Higher Education Policy of the Government of Pakistan and submitted to The Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan January 2003.

A policy memorandum on a Proposed Media Policy for Pakistan in the post Sept. 11th scenario written at the request of Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, the then Ambassador to the United States, and later submitted to Mr. Khurshid Kasuri (Foreign Minister of Pakistan) and Mr. Ashraf Jehangir Qazi (Ambassador to the US).

[/quote]

lately we've suffered from dissipating enthusiasm from members, so your energy would be very welcome in the group.

i would encourage you and anyone else to consider, if only for intellectual stimulation/networking, vttp. vttp.org . talk to Athar, and if he needs a reference, PM me.

edit: one more thing. if I remember correctly, they actually have something called the National Policy Dialogue Series going on, a competition of sorts on policy papers/proposals on development issues. perhaps you/we can write something for that :).

38

[quote]

I did some calculation and according to above ^ calculations on avg 83 student are enlorled in 1 school, which indicates that around one third of these are ghost schools !!

What can be done in this situation :(
[/QUOTE]

very telling picture. in a reasonably developed town like Topi in Swabi, I know that the government school's maths teacher had been gone for 2 years. the students about to give their matric exams had not had instruction in their school in Maths since class 8.

one idea for this might be to increase funding for universities that display a desire to pass on education to surrounding areas. For instance, GIKI. A private university in a rural area, ever strapped of funds. If it's funding was contingent on social welfare, student intiatives like The Topi Project (uni students volunteering to tutor school students in their spare time) might get much more institutional support.

students especially always have the will to help. young adults usually have the most tendency towards social activism, in my opinion. if this was encouraged by the institute itself, in exchange for educational credits/stipends, we might see this youthful social activism applied much more effectively.

also there is absolutely no shortage of the desire to acquire education. this topi project i speak of, used to attract so many students we had to conduct two sessions at a time. kids used to bike miles, sharing bikes, whatever they needed to get there.

39

I will try to get the required data and work out the feasibility. As not much is available online so it will take some time. I will send it to you and then you can do following to help.

1- Form a proposal, presentable to higher authorities.
2- Try to convert that proposal to article for English newspaper in Pakistan.

ravage I would love to visit and see that group in action They have a nice site.And I am sure they must be doing great job in future. :slight_smile: :k:

I am not very enthusiastic about anything. This is also part of my responsibility along with other things.I don’t have high expectations And I don’t have not many bright ideas. I am neither very intelligent nor highly qualified. But still I can improvise on other people’s bright ideas, and the same we all can do. See if some other people had similar problems, how they tackled them.

Basically Pakistan is a very difficult and messy country. And young generation is very indifferent to the problems as they have not created these problem, they got all the mess from older generation.

*Lekin kia karain ghar aakhir jaisa bhi hai, ghar tu akhir apna hai na * :slight_smile:

The good thing now is that we have many people in higher authorties who work days and night for our betterment.

Dr.Atta-ur-Rehman , Nisaar Memon, Shukat Aziz, Kamran lashari and many others have worked a lot and currently doing for betterment of our country.

40

I recognize that low literacy rate is a big issue and needs to be resolved- but what I am saying is that the problem is so huge that we have to prioritise and work on high priority tasks as we will never be able to achieve the ideal. Rather than worry too much about the backward areas at this stage, we should spend our limited resources on improving our education system as what we are producing through our system are very low level and may as well remain uneducated !!