Prime Minister Imran Khan Thursday directed to devise an emergency programme to redress challenges faced by the energy and petroleum sectors and ensure that the process of reformation system puts minimum burden on the common man.
The common man will not be made to bear the brunt of an inefficient and corrupt system enforced since years and not delivering, the prime minister said while presiding over a meeting held to review measures taken for improving efficiency of the state-owned institutions.
Minister for Energy Umar Ayub Khan, Minister for Planning Asad Umar, Minister for Privatization Muhammadmian Soomro, Minister for Aviation Ghulam Sarwar Khan, Advisor on Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, Advisor on Commerce Abdul Razak Dawood, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Information and Broadcasting Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Petroleum Nadeem Babar and senior government officers attended the meeting.
The meeting was apprised of the administrative reforms in the auxiliary institutions of the ministries of petroleum and energy during the last 18 months, raise in revenue and the measures taken to improve the overall performance of these institutions. The participants were also briefed about the problems faced by the ministries of petroleum and energy as well as the proposals currently under consideration to address those issues.
The prime minister said the present government since its inception is taking measures to tackle the challenges faced by the energy sector on an emergency basis. He said the present government, despite inheriting the grave administrative and financial challenges in the energy sector, has been striving from the very first day to save the masses from the burden of those problems.
The prime minister stressing for emergency measures to address the challenges of energy sector also called for running a public awareness campaign so that not only the people can be taken into confidence about measures being taken by the government to address the energy issues but also bring the elements involved in power and gas thefts to justice with the help of the people.
Talking about reforms in the current administrative structure, he said since changes at administration level alone will not be enough in the current situation, they will have to hire the services of best professionals and technical experts at every level in the ministries of petroleum and energy so that best human resources can be utilized to address the problems. He said as years of corruption and inefficiency has weakened the foundations of the system, the emergency situation requirs out-of-box measures.
The meeting proposed to hand over policy, regulation, implementation and the matters relating to finance and administration in the ministries to the people having expertise in different sectors so that every office holder can fulfill his responsibilities in the best way while living within his jurisdiction.
The prime minister directed to link the performance of every head of institution with the achievement of targets so that the performance can be reviewed on the basis of target achievement within the stipulated time.
