Life in Pakistan is pretty laid back. I am sure the situation
various from person to person and profession to profession. But overall, I
think once the things get to normal, life is put on ‘cruise’. For a working
individual in the Pakistan, things start early in the morning. This includes
but not limited to before work rituals. Also getting to work and how to avoid
the rush traffic is kept in mind.
Once at work, the usual skimming the newspaper, emails,
checking any ‘Urgent’ write-ups etc. before any ‘real’ work is done. So
basically, if someone ever wondered if working in Pakistan would be any
different than working in any other country; I think things don’t change much. However,
I do think the work environment changes from floor to floor. The work pressure
also varies.
For the most part, people take pride in what they do here.
Considering the job situation and general environment, all the employees feel privileged
and honored to be working for the government. The best part is government job
is ‘permanent’. At least, that’s what it is termed as. There are also ‘temps’
or ‘contractual’ employees. The ‘permanent’ employees are entitled for all the benefits
of the department like promotion, medical, pension etc. The contractual
employees are only offered relatively higher salaries without any benefits.
The private sector is also thriving in Pakistan. They offer
much better salary packages and benefits. But as mentioned earlier, the work
pressure is exponential. The competition is cut-throat and it is result
oriented. If the defined goals are not met in the given time, this could mean
disaster for an individual. Also, in case the company does not meet its
financial goals, this could also result in few lay-offs. On the contrary in the
government or the public sector, no matter how the department performs, meets
its financial goals or not, meets its objectives or not, the employees are not
laid off. The department gets government’s help in one way or another. We have a few very good examples of performing
and non-performing departments in our country.
These
government departments do have annual performance evaluation. One has to meet
the requirements of these evaluations for promotions.
My
responsibilities are quite similar to what I was doing in the U.S. I think there are many learning opportunities here. There is enormous amount of work which needs to be completed. Also, there is a quite a bit of government and private sector interactions with our department on regular basis. This also shows the importance of work that we perform here. That is why we all take great pride in what we do for the people of Pakistan.
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