Islamabad: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday awarded appreciation certificates to the “top 10 best performing federal ministries” and announced incentives and extra allowance for employees so that they could work hard and do better than before.
The ministries have been shortlisted on the basis of the implementation of projects/goals that they had set before themselves in line with the vision of the prime minister.
Ministries of Communication (Minister: Murad Saeed), Planning & Development (Minister: Asad Umar) and Poverty Alleviation & Social Safety Division (Minister: Dr Sania Nishtar) were declared the top three.
The seven remaining ministries include:
Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training (Minister: Shafqat Mahmood), Ministry of Human Rights headed (Dr Shireen Mazari), Ministry of Industries and Production headed (Khusro Bakhtiar), National Security Division headed (Dr Moeed Yusuf), Ministry of Commerce (Abdul Razak Dawood), Ministry of Interior (Sheikh Rashid Ahmed), and Ministry of National Food Security and Research (Syed Fakhar Imam).
Missing ministries
Interestingly, some key ministries like Information, Foreign affairs, Health, Defence and Aviation did not make the list.
While addressing the ceremony, Prime Minister Khan termed evaluation of the ministries’ performance a great opportunity to know how they were doing.
He hoped that the performance of the ministries would improve during the remaining tenure of the government. Such a review was critical to achieve the goal of Pakistan becoming a self-sufficient country, he said.
The prime minister said performance assessment was imperative to bring improvement in the country’s bureaucracy. “The government is fully focusing on ensuring good governance and the main objective is to improve the lives of the people,” he added.
On the occasion, the ministries with a performance score of 80 per cent and over were also highlighted.
The prime minister said when “marks” — referring to his school days — were publicised, it would improve the performance.
He said that no system without rewards and penalties could be successful, giving the example of performance gaps in private and public hospitals.
The premier said the criteria should be further refined and increased importance should be given to how a ministry can improve its performance to benefit national interest with “out-of-box solutions” to common problems.
Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry in a tweet congratulated the recipients of the appreciation certificates adding, though his own ministry was missing in the top 10 list, one reason was that performance was measured on the basis of implementation of projects that the ministries submitted to the PMO.
Chaudhry said he had modified some projects which would provide more positive results next time.
