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A frozen era of backwardness and corruption

48 22
21.04.2025

Dear Honourable PM,

Progress requires a detox from perpetual pessimism and learned helplessness. Unwillingness to change has pushed Pakistan into a frozen era of backwardness and corruption. On 14 April 2025, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Sindh Assembly disclosed massive financial irregularities of Rs667 million, in the audit of just one department — the Karachi Development Authority (KDA).

It revealed that Rs667 million or 30% of KDA's total pension fund of Rs2.21 billion was fraudulently received by some 500 bogus pensioners. Taking the liberty of applying the same ratio (30% illicit pension syphoning per department), can we not safely conclude that approximately Rs300 billion of our total pension budget of Rs1 trillion is being fraudulently depleted by ghost pensioners every year.

NADRA is indeed a wonderful organisation. But what good is it to the ordinary citizens if they still need to follow a century-old photocopy and affidavit driven bureaucratic processes for routine........

© The Express Tribune