High hopes have been attached with the directive of His Excellency the Prime Minister giving fixed targets to Ministers, Ministries and Division and regular monitoring of the same. A lot of people through press have termed it a long due right step towards right direction. His Excellency Mr. Shaukat Aziz is a brilliant internationally reputed banker and fortunately is not a Politician hence his this policy is a wside step, But would it achieve the desire goals? Certainly not because people implementing this policy are th same old faces who are expert in tabulating the same figures suiting to each new situation.
Old generation might remember that in 1975-77 every second or third day there used to be a small news item at 07.45 pm news that so and so named Balouch Sardar alongwith his 4000, 5000 tribesmen have come down from the hills and confirming his trust on Chairman Bhutto has joined peoples party. Had all these figures of tribesmen coming down the hills during the whole year been calculated this would had even crossed the total population whole of Pakistan, This is the type of government departments figures, their achievement reports.
I was then working in a Middle East. Once coming on leave my plane stopped over at another Arab state. When new passengers boarded one of them was a friend of mine working in a Pakistani bank there. He was a little up-set. On enquiry he told me he had missed some domestic things as at last moment he had to remain in bank to make a statement of remittances demanded by Pakistan Embassy there. It surprised me and I enquired why he had to give these figures to Pakistan Embassy as Banks were under independent Boards and they cannot reveal such figures except to their Head Office only who can forward the same to State Bank or Finance Division etc. He surprised me that he cannot dare refusing.
On my return back I checked with Habib Bank and United Bank in my country of working. They told me yes they were too supplying all these figures of home remittances, trade figures etc to Pakistan Embassy who demand this. I checked all the private exchange companies in that country sending remittances to Pakistan. Pakistani staff working in all these confirmed yes they have to supply these figures to Embassy. When I asked a Pakistani manager of such a company that if his Arab boss came to know then what would happen, the reply was his service would immediately be terminated. When I enquired then why he does not refuse Pakistan Embassy to oblige, he shocked me saying at early state he did hesitate in providing these figures the result was his wife working in a autonomous body in Karachi was transferred to the interior and he had to surrender.
I have worked abroad for 20 years. Incidentally I had indirectly been in a way been a very little insignificant player for promoting of home remittances. I had never been any employee of a bank etc. But it was one of my you can say hobby insisting Pakistani to send their remittances through legal channels and keep their savings in Pakistan. I saw with my own naked eyes Pakistan Embassies never ever had any interest in this subject and I have never seen or known if any Embassy official ever came out in the field on this subject eg visiting labour camps etc. What I saw was some of the Habib Bank Limited and United Bank Limited officials after their banking hours and on holidays visited labour camps advising Pakistanis to send remittances through their bank and sometime they took bank stationery and stamps etc with them to issue bank drafts in deserts/labour camps. This they did because they had fixed minimum targets to achieve. Embassies never ever did this. But they only collected these figures, sent these accumulated figures under the cover of their letters to Foreign Affairs in Islamabad showing as if this was the achievement of their personal efforts and Foreign Affairs forwarded this to Finance Division. Embassies staff based on these “Pukee Pakay Kheer” showing their efficiency got extensions for further staying etc.
These figures from one side came through Banking head office and from other side through Embassies/Foreign Affairs and practically showed as if these were two separate deeds of two different parties and thus on accumulation/calculation arrived at a very big picture which wrong mislead the policy makers. This figure work is that has in fact hammered the real development of the country as these figures always showed wrong facts with the results when policy makers made their policies based on these figures the desired results could not be achieved. This can be understood from one little example which very easily every one of us can understand. See government saying economy is boosting and in support figures of boosted economy are shown. It is a natural fact when health of economy boosts the health of ordinary man’s kitchen also improves. But we can see health of our kitchens is gradually deteriorating and last year a time cam when we were given an advice from very high that if tomatoos are out of reach or their price has gone up why do not we stop using tomattoos in our curry.