Yellow governance

[ahlam1399]

ISLAMABAD: In the federal secretariat, yellow stick-on chits are becoming popular for a strange reason particularly in the ministries and divisions led by un-elected advisers and special assistants of the prime minister. There are reports of bureaucrats showing reluctance to formally send the summaries to un-elected cabinet members, fearing possible action from the NAB.A senior bureaucrat while terming this informal style of secretariat working as “rule of yellow chits” in a “yellow governance,” said that some of the ministries have developed an interesting arrangement between advisers and reluctant bureaucrats, in order to get around the constitutional provisions and rules.It is said that in Zulfi Bukhari’s case, the Supreme Court had allowed Bukhari to serve as special assistant to prime minister on overseas Pakistanis but warned that the court would look into it and examine if Bukhari goes beyond his mandate and exercises executive powers of a state minister.Prime Minister Imran Khan has five advisers and 14 special assistants most of whom have occupied federal minister offices in the secretariat. They have deputed all the personal staff of ministers with themselves, use official vehicles and camp offices of federal ministers.These advisers and special assistants hold key ministries like finance, petroleum, overseas Pakistanis and human resources, industries, commerce, media and information, petroleum and accountability. Although prime minister has given the status of ministers to most of these advisers and special assistants, constitution and rules of business do not recognise them as ministers. Legally and constitutionally Prime Minister Imran Khan is federal minister for these over two dozen ministries.“Because of this situation, bureaucrats in certain cases are reluctant to submit important policy files to these advisers and special assistants for fear of ‘Next Round of Accountability’, since they know that the advisers and special assistants are legally not ministers and that summaries and files cannot be submitted to them as they cannot sign or give written orders,” an official source said.The source added that in view of this situation, the modality carved out and applicable in certain ministries is to make good use of yellow stick-on chits. Since federal secretaries are reluctant to formally send the summaries and files to advisers and special assistants, they are told to put on a “yellow stick-on” chit on the summary/file and send it to the adviser or SAPM. The file is formally marked to prime minister but through yellow chit it is sent to adviser/SAPM, and he in return gives his nod on the yellow chit before file/summary is forwarded to PM who in all these case is legally the federal minister, the source claimed.“Bureaucracy which is always in a self-preservation mode, is nowadays hyper careful. They take pains to even keep a good private record of these ‘yellow chits’ through photocopies and mobile enabled photographs,” this correspondent is told by the reliable bureaucrat.A political associate of the government, when asked about the prevailing practice in the Federal Secretariat, he said that it was not the government's policy and was just going on as a stop-gap arrangement. He said that all accountability departments, including NAB, had been asked not to harass civil servants.http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/com/cwEr/~4/g1q9SAN1L1o

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