Expansion of CTG

This refers to a letter published in your daily. Although the issue of expansion of the CTG is not clear yet, but comments have started coming from various quarters. The CTG has already passed nine months with the limited numbers of advisers plus the full support of the permanent secretaries, and above all the support of the armed forces in specific fields where needed. I have considerable doubts about the effectiveness of having consultants to support and help the government. The reasons are:
1. As we all know, the consultants will have no constitutional status and authority in real sense.
2. The consultants will have no accountability as required for the position they expected to represent. It would be very difficult to integrate them with the system of government that exist now.
3. The consultants might give rise to conflict of personalities with the permanent structure and the advisory council and result in uncertain administrative behaviour.
4. There is a well known joke about the consultants-- they never look at their own watch, look at someone else's watch for time.
These are only a few negative sides mentioned here. A lot of others can be cited if one looks at the records of services provided by the consultants so far in our normal system of government,
There is scope to look at the problem of over burden from a different perspective. The government might consider reviewing their total policy and the strategies followed during the last 9 months. We think they have over burdened themselves with the task of political reforms, not to speak of the complicated task of removing age old corruption in one go. The experience now shows that a phased plan of action would have been more manageable and productive They have missed the chance of reaping the full benefit of public support. Nevertheless, their success story in the field of corruption is worth mentioning. But the cost of living of lower and middle class people have gone higher and higher compared to last regimes. This is the biggest concern for the people and the CTG as well.
To conclude my idea, I might urge the government to kindly look again at the prime objective of the CTG and fix the plan of action with full focus on the general election. The role of the government machineries to ensure that the honest people get access through election to run the government is considered a difficult one. This will depend entirely on the voters to choose his or her representative. Therefore, leave it to them.
The idea of adding consultants to the team of the CTG will only complicate the management. I express my wholehearted appreciation and support for the Chief Adviser of the CTG for his untiring services. He may kindly evaluate the performance of his team and initiate necessary adjustment to make it more dynamic and to help remove the thorny issues. The role and effectiveness of the permanent government structures in supporting the efforts of the CTG may be quickly reviewed and adjusted in phases.