A Volunteer Government

By Faizan Usmani

The Idea: As an initial and one of the basic solutions to deal with national concerns such as lack of financial resources, poverty, unemployment and the like, the best measure could be taken by any government of third world is to stop offering any kind of monetary awards in terms of salary, bonuses, various allowances etc to all provincial and national parliamentarians including ministers, prime minister and president. These all jobs will be done on volunteer basis only and its time for all our leaders to prove their patriotism with motherland.

As per this suggestion, all expenses of assembly members and ministers will be paid by the political party or group they are attached with. Or else, they may be allowed to work part time for any other organization to earn their own livelihood.

In short, we can not tolerate any more burdens on our economy and anyone willing to provide possible relief by any viable means should be always welcomed. Our government as well as opposition needs pure VOLUNTEERS from head to toe. It’s high time to act now rather than expecting the nation to kill itself for the sake of their leaders.

The Problem:
With respect to status of crisis management in developing countries (such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh etc.), no extensive studies and relevant researches have been conducted so far by any local or international research institution but considering the existing conditions in severely affected areas that include all social, economical and political disasters of the country, it can be easily claimed that overall situation about highly-effective and proficient crisis management is quite pathetic in many countries.

On organizational level, the term “crisis management” is generally referred to a well-prepared plan of action that is implemented when any negative situation occurs within organization. Starting from most severe crisis to routine mishaps, there is always a crisis plan made by companies in order to successfully handle occurred negative situation in shortest span of time. Besides organizations and purely commercial business entities, almost all areas of human affairs entail crisis handling strategies and initiatives which are meticulously designed, redesigned and tested and then brought into actions depending upon the complexity of both expected and unexpected emergencies.

Particularly those issues that directly fall under the jurisdiction of the government, crisis management in such is on its lowest ebb and lots of efforts are required by governing bodies to effectively address the crisis-like situations that may take place in any moment of life.

Apart from natural disasters and unpredictable calamities, recent economic recession, shortages of power and electricity resources, ongoing war against militants in the tribal belt, scarcity of flour in all provinces, and depleting monetary reserves are the latest examples of poor crisis management. It also shows that we are even not capable of managing predictable crisis.

What we daily see in the official statements released by concerned ministries and office holders is just an old repetition of lack of resources in dealing with such problems but nobody is ready to accept the responsibility for the ineffective use of available resources and for the lack of other viable options and creative ideas in this regard.

Furthermore, all politicians both from ruling and opposition parties spend most of the time in picking the holes in each other and criticize governmental policies instead of putting forward workable plans and strategies with regard to managing the very crisis. TV anchors and experts, participating in popular talk shows of various news channels, scream their head off for hours needlessly but with not a single remedy or strategy of effective crisis management has been yet proposed by them so far. The same is true for columnists, writers and other opinion leaders.

A little time is left for us but whenever it comes to crisis management, the so-called leaders seem to be so much confused and at a loss as well. But one thing I would like to propose being a humble true blue citizen is that in order to come out recent financial crisis, we have to reduce extra expenditures especially on governmental level. The abovementioned is the not the whole solution but it can be part of a set of solutions dealing with all of the national concerns.