Good governance with strong institutions to uplift masses: Governor Ch Sarwar

Lahore : Governor Punjab Ch Muhammad Sarwar has said that good governance with strong institutions
and accountability process carried its impact down to the masses, particularly to the poor.

He was addressing the certificate awarding ceremony among the participants of 109th National Management Course and 24th Senior Management Course held at National School of Public Policy here on Friday.

It was important to improve governance and build institutions for poverty reduction and development of the country, he said.
The governor said that state was responsible for creating a conducive political, legal and economic environment for building individual capabilities, creating socio-economic opportunities and encouraging private initiatives, adding that these could only be delivered through the civil services.
“We should always keep in mind that people are at the heart of public policy and their welfare should be our goal and for which we all will be judged,” he added.
The country needed dedication and commitment by the Civil Servants at the federal and provincial levels, he said.
“It is imperative that we improve service delivery to the people and achieve the expected level of performance,” he said.
He said civil services must now rise to meet the challenges. “The government has provided the direction and policy framework and the
civil services should execute and deliver better services to the satisfaction of the people of Pakistan,” he added.
The governor said that they had rich and diverse experience of managing state affairs in the federal and provincial governments and dealing with the public at various levels.
He said that the officers had unique perspectives on problems and issues and more specifically, on formulation and implementation of national policies in various sectors.

He said that Pakistan is a country with immense opportunities ranging from natural resources to its demography. However, he added that currently the country was facing multiple challenges on both social
and economic fronts while terrorism and extremism were the central concerns of the nation.

“The National Action Plan has yielded positive results, however, defeating terrorism completely still remains our top priority,” he said.
He said that an alliance of super powers jointly could not succeed to curb terrorists from Afghanistan whereas Pakistan had successfully eliminated terrorist from the country with the help of public support, Pak-Army, intelligence institutions, police and other security departments.

The governor said that Pakistan has the capacity to become a great and prosperous country.
“We are a nation of over 200 million people whose capabilities are second to none,” he added.

The governor shared the information that
about 22 million children were not going to school and they were working in workshops or other work places.
“We will bring them to schools so that they could get education and become useful citizens,” he vowed.

He said that political influence in the institutions had been terminated and now posting and transfers would be made on the basis of merit instead of political pressure. “Our standard should be Right Person for The Right Job,” he added.

The governor said that Civil Services of Pakistan were the mainframe that holds together the various state organizations and institutions. He said the strength of the mainframe lies in professionalism, competence, integrity, compassion, commitment and perseverance of the officers.

It is pertinent to mention here that 58 officers of Grade 20 participated in the 109th National Management Course while 46 officers of Grade 19 attended the 24th Senior Management Course.
Rector of National School of Public Policy Azmat Ali Ranjha was also present on the occasion.