THERE are some people who adhere very strongly to their old personal belongings. They are not ready to leave them even if they become useless. They just want to have them around so that they can see them any time they want. These people, commonly known as hoarders, will gather their old things and keep them intact even if they are totally futile and unusable any more. The problem of some of our senior officials is that the most important parameter they use in picking up the employees who work with them is their total allegiance to them. The employees should have great loyalty to the senior officials even if they are not qualified for the job they are assigned to. Their educational qualifications, experience and training do not count here. The only skill that qualifies them for the job with the senior official or the head of the department is their total allegiance to him. They are not required to do anything else. For this very reason we always find that our government departments are being run by employees who lack the required competence to develop the department. They are, however, extremely loyal to their boss and that is the only "certificate" asked from them. Because of their undivided loyalty to the head of the department, these officials remain on their seats for a long time until their department regresses beyond repair or is hit by a disaster which will make it impossible for the boss to defend them. At this particular time, the unskillful officials will, regretfully, have to leave because their substandard performance have been proved beyond any doubt. If what I have said so far is considered a problem in our country, the greatest problem, however, is that the same official who has been sacked for incompetence is appointed an adviser to the same senior official who was obliged to fire him against his heart. By appointing him as an adviser, the senior official will be honoring the man who displayed complete loyalty to him before he had to unwillingly do away with him. If we suppose that the job of an adviser is only honorary and he will never be consulted on any issue, in this case he will be occupying a place of another qualified man who could have presented sound consultations that the department would have benefited from. Our man, who is loyal to our senior official, will bring disaster to the department if he ever dares to give advice. His advice will not be disastrous to the department alone but to the entire country and its citizens because simply he is not qualified to give a good advice. If you look at the number of advisers in our ministries and service government departments you find them to be too many. The series of advisers in government departments are never ending. We will find that a large number of these advisers were employees in the same ministries and government departments but they have been retained in their new positions because of their extreme loyalty to the minister or the head of the department with whom they had worked before they got fired. The senior official would like to have these "useless" advisers around him just like hoarders would like to keep their old things around them even if they can no longer use them. These advisers are costing the government huge sums of money because they are being paid monthly salaries and other fringe benefits without doing any useful job. If they were ever useful, our departments would have greatly developed and would have been able to compete with their counterparts in the advance world. The job of an adviser is an important one. Any man who takes up this job should be qualified enough to provide his senior officials with good advice that will enable them to promote their departments. Advisers should be experts in their fields and competent in their performance so as to be useful to their superiors. However, except for very few, the job of an adviser in our country is only an honorary one taken by an unqualified man who is making money for a job undone. They gather around senior officials, sip tea or coffee with them and leave office after the end of the working hours. If they ever ventured to give an advice on any issue, it will subsequently bring us disasters and tragedies.
