Date: Monday, February 22nd, 2016.

The dilemma that is the Steel Mills

The federal government has asked the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) to justify the retention of its employees, with the public-sector entity witnessing a virtual shutdown. It has directed the PSM management to invoke a 1968 law to cut back on the workforce and, with it, reduce the expenditures on employees. The directive comes after the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) had already directed the lay-off of hundreds of daily-wage workers in an attempt to save money. The recent development, however, expands the scope of the lay-offs so as to include permanent employees as well.



The ECC has regularly approved salaries for PSM employees, releasing the amount despite the virtual closure of Pakistan’s largest industrial unit. Suspension of gas supplies and its failure to clear the dues it owed the SSGC has been the final straw for the public sector entity. In a recent interview, the chief executive of the PSM had said that the entity needed Rs9 billion just to see it through to June. The industrial unit has been incurring losses for a while now and it has suffered due to incessant oversupply of Chinese steel in the country as well as due to its outdated machinery and short-term strategies — a hallmark of Pakistani managers working for a state-owned entity.

Now, the federal government wants to settle the issue once and for all. It has been involved in a tussle with the Sindh government, which is unwilling to let the centre sell the PSM, but less-than-willing to do anything about sorting out the mess at the industrial unit either. No one appears to be willing to take responsibility for resolving the various problems faced by the PSM and not many buyers have shown interest in it. The PML-N now obviously feels that the solution is to start laying off employees, which could mean the virtual end of the PSM. We feel the PSM has taken the same path as that of PIA — running into losses and taxpayers’ money being pumped into it to bail it out, all to no avail. The government is choosing the easy way out here, but the fact remains that this will still not help it find a buyer for the PSM, which is the real dilemma it is facing.

Another set of goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted in 2000 by all the member countries of the UN. A 15-year timeline was decided upon during which governments across the globe were going to try and end poverty, hunger and disease. Progress has been patchy and Pakistan is amongst the many countries which failed to achieve the goals. On February 19, the National Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for 2030 and called upon both the private and public sectors to work towards their achievement. The SDGs are aspirational, even more so than their predecessors. They aim towards sustainable and inclusive growth, an end to inequality, gender-based discrimination and poverty for all citizens of the earth regardless of whether they live in developed or developing countries.

According to the National Assembly, this is what Pakistan hopes to achieve by 2030 or at least make efforts for there to be significant positive changes. However, there is little in the way of policies and actual groundwork to achieve any of these goals. The resolution has been adopted but the commitment is missing, as it was for the MDGs. Our approach to dealing with problems still heavily relies on waiting until they become too big to ignore and then hastily fixing whatever is easily fixable. Yes, terrorism has slowed us down and cost us precious resources which could have been better employed elsewhere but poor governance and lack of resolve has been plaguing our development agenda for far longer.

The SDGs focus on sustainable and inclusive development. That is something we in Pakistan have failed at spectacularly and for a long time. The division of resources has historically been unequal and other provinces lag far behind Punjab. It remains to be seen whether the policies for achievement of this new set of goals will focus on a more equitable division of resources or follow the previous pattern. The adoption of aspirational resolutions is an important first step in bringing about long-term positive change. Also required is a commitment to inclusivity and that is where Pakistan consistently falls behind.

Thar and its many commissions

One would think that after the failure of the numerous commissions that were formed in the past to look into the causes of deaths of malnourished children in Thar, the Sindh government would have realised that it needed to go beyond the forming of commissions. The findings of such commissions have rarely resulted in concrete solutions and have done little to alleviate the misery of the people of Thar. The latest commission to investigate the causes of deaths in drought-hit parts of Thar, formed under Justice (retd) Ghulam Sarwar Korai, is expected to submit its report in court by March 17.

In December 2014, this newspaper published a report on the failure of the fifth commission formed by the Sindh chief minister to probe the mounting death toll in Thar. The commission formed under Justice Korai is the seventh such body. It seems that distracting the courts and NGOs — which have gone to court against alleged governmental negligence — by creating bureaucratic hurdles has become the norm for the authorities. It is clear that the mere formation of a commission to probe the cause of deaths and assign responsibility is not working for the benefit of the people. One of the earlier commissions formed under Justice (retd) Zahid Kurban Alavi had categorically held the Sindh health department and the elected representatives from Thar responsible for the deaths of children. Justice Alavi called the provincial disaster management authority a “white elephant” for failing to deliver. Before that, a commission headed by the then Hyderabad DIG had also held the provincial government responsible. The authorities’ response to these findings had been to disband these commissions and refuse to accept their recommendations. It remains to be seen if the Sindh government will accept the findings of the latest commission that has been formed, but if history is any reflection, its findings, too, will be filed away until another bout of disease takes down more people from Thar. What we need is a solid response from the Sindh government as well as the relevant departments that have been previously identified as being responsible for Thar’s dismal state.