“The prime minister is pleased to make the following rules, namely the Civil Servants (Directory Retirement from Service) Rules 2020,”reads a notification published in the Gazette of Pakistan and issued by the Establishment Division, dated April 15. Is this a much needed reform or a blatant sign of mistrust in the civil servants? Irrespective of the motive, at least it shows an effort, although apparently hasty and poorly envisioned.

The conspicuous nature of the undesirability of existing retirement rules may have instigated the champions of civil service reforms to bring about these changes in the retirement rules. But they have missed the shot by a considerable margin. This reform initiative appears disruptive, erratic and fragmented.

The wording of this notification is fraught with grammatical mistakes and linguistic absurdities. Repeatedly, the pronoun for a civil servant is ‘he’ or ‘him’; does this signify that female officers are exempt from these rules?

It is a matter of grave concern that we are following the same outdated form, structure, and content in our official documents without giving proper attention to details. Even more distressful is the fact that most of the people in authority do not really bother to thoroughly read official correspondence.

Drafting stereotyped summaries and notes for approval at the lower end of the bureaucracy and their virtually blind approval at the upper levels of administrative and political leadership has affected the intellectual abilities of the entire executive machinery of our country.

There is thus a big question mark on the purpose of this notification and the process of its development. What, actually, is the objective of this change? Has it been clearly spelled out in the document and shared with those to whom these rules apply? Whether this document is informed by any research and analysis or is it a product merely of the whims of a tiny coterie?

Did the authorities carry out a risk assessment before embarking on the venture? Have they correctly identified the implementation challenges and developed coping mechanisms? Are the new rules benchmarked against international best practices? If the answer to any of these few questions is ‘no’, then the purposefulness of this notification is in real danger.

From a careful perusal of the notification, it transpires that the new rules are applicable only to government employees who have completed 20 years of service. If the intended purpose of this reform is to shed dead weight and promote a culture of performance in our civil service regime, then what is the logic of sparing others?

If the purpose is to give the government more powers over senior civil servants, this tug of war is potentially counterproductive in terms of value creation in service delivery. More worrying is the fact that there are many established low-performing officials in our government hierarchy. If our ministries, departments and even courts have not cracked down on these ‘fat cows’, how can this superficially crafted notification do the job?

Prior to this notification, a government employee could have been retired primarily on four major grounds – voluntary retirement (25 years of qualifying service); superannuation (60 years of age); medical reasons; and compulsory retirement under Efficiency & Discipline (E&D) rules. Under the new rules, however, the so called performance evaluation report (PER), and to some extent, the promotion boards, seem to have gained powers on giving recommendations for ‘directory retirement’.

This implies that all is good with the existing PER and promotion system but something bad about the retirement rules, so good has been given the charge to correct the bad. But what if the ‘good’ is the root cause of all the ills attached with the ‘bad’?

Ironically, these new rules are exceptionally dependent on the PER and promotion system which itself is effectively defunct. There is hardly a culture of fair and objective assessment in our public sector, so that performance evaluation and promotion are ritualistic exercises at their best. Essentially, earning an average or adverse PER or even supersession by the promotion board are rare occurrences. So will be the number of officers who fall to these insubstantial grounds for retirement.

Also, there are already procedures available for dealing with the cases of corruption and gross misconduct. Why then create a parallel structure, and that too, one full of incongruities? The composition of retirement boards and committees is overflowing with all those portfolio positions that are already part and parcel of our obsolete performance management and reward system.

The procedure for ‘directory retirement’ is not only synonymous with the existing E&D Rules but also cumbersome in nature. Finally, the right of appeal or review makes the probability of retirement extremely moderate, thus at the end it will feel like making a mountain out of a molehill.

No reform can bring desirable improvements in a system unless it is an outcome of a political discourse and grounded in the principles of fairness and equality of opportunity those concerned. The agents of change need to be identified. They have to have the necessary levels of competence to use innovative techniques in the design and implementation of civil service reforms.

The change ambassadors should make necessary changes in the light of feedback received. Most importantly, this process should be juxtaposed with a clear roadmap for restructuring the interconnectivities and refining every single element in the system and the sub-system.