I highly appreciate Pakistan’s Army Chief General Raheel Sharif and his swift action on the 12 military officers, who were involved in corruption. He kept his promise and sacked them all, which gives hope to accountability in the country. Charity must start at home and Sharif’s action showed that he is serious about accountability. I think it’s the right time for all institutions from political, military to civil society to take action against those who are responsible of corruption.
Why not include the accountability of donors, who regularly say that Pakistan’s basic life indicators are on decline but continue to support organisations through funding? Rural Support Programs (RSP) have been working in Pakistan for 40 years, but we are still far away from reducing poverty. Micro credit did nothing and the poor are now trapped in debt due to a faulty micro credit system, why? Who has ever asked the RSPs where the donor funding of trillion rupees went in the last 30 years? Have they conducted any social audit of their services? If yes, then where are the results? Why do we keep the Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) out of the accountability system? Also why do we tend to save judiciaries, which have doomed our country due to biased decisions? There is an urgent need of accountability of judiciaries so that people know what and where it went wrong when they decide on major cases of public interest.
It is high time for the government to start from its own house and make cabinet members accountable for not only their financial issues, but also the delivery of their services. Lawyers are another segment of society, who should be equally responsible to the judiciary, so why save them? Similarly, media houses are also accountable towards the public because their irresponsible attitude has also created a lot of problems for our country.
Pakistan’s poor people are becoming poorer every day, education is in shambles, health is deteriorating, no safe drinking water or sanitation, and people question where the donors’ money went?
— The reader is a Pakistani development consultant based in Karachi, Pakistan
