Problems with Planning
In the case of
planning PHA has a very weak structure as well all known planning involves
setting organizational goals as a whole for achieving organizational work
efficiency. Organizational goals for parks and horticulture authority are
however necessarily limited. The main and foremost goal of the authority is
making Lahore Singapore. That’s what every employee is instructed to do with no
clear vision. There used to be formal planning in PHA when this organization
was established everyone in the upper tier was working under limited funds to
achieve great targets but as the time passed things were taken into hand by the
politicians. Now there is little direction in this department of its major
responsibilities as in the case of horticulture. Horticulture is the art,
science,
technology
and business
of intensive plant
cultivation for human use. There is no art or even technology
associated with this department everything is being done on piece of paper that
is a summary which awaits approval of the director general.
These people at
pha sit around make plans of what has been assigned to them by the government
the loveable chief minister shahbaz sharif. The fundamental root of planning is
setting an extra ordinary vision and mission for the future. There is no clear
vision or mission statement in PHA. Mission statement is “make Lahore
Singapore” First of all there is no comparison of Lahore and Singapore. The
population the literacy a lot of factors account with each other. This mission
was set back in year 2000. 12 years have passed there has been little or no
development.
There are no
long term plans behind the whole scope of this department. Planning is done for
a given time frame that is short. Some
politician wants to build a beautiful green belt. He uses his political
influence and makes PHA do it. Most of the plans of PHA a are of single use
as in the case of Shaukat Khanum road the demographics of the area are
different. Green belts couldn’t be planned like the ones on the ring road near
Mazaar e Quaid. So the plans are single use.
There is
sometimes problem of finishing projects within a given time frame. The
employees start working whenever they hear some director is visiting the spot
to take a look at how much has the project been completed. These projects are
even at times not well defined during 2005 the Mehfooz Shaheed garrison ring
road over head was to be landscaped with grass. But what the early Thekedar did
was he actually put tree seeds in the ground. This later became waste. Such type
of problems is norms of PHA. The directors of PHA don’t have a clear authority
over the lower staff i-e on gardeners they just pass the projects top to bottom
make recommendations earn decent salary. This authority by law is in hands of
the director general. So there is a lot of uncertainty for director to
implement plans on time.
PHA has no
specific plans of making the common man benefit from these parks. The highest
number of people that go into parks is of the lower class. The middle class who
live in the lush areas they avail the benefit of PHA’s work.
Goals are set
in a traditional way chief minister sets the goal. Director General passes the
order down through directors and gets them implemented. Employees at lower
level don’t know about the basic aim all they get to do is work that has been
ordered. So there is no involvement of Lower Technicians in Work so we conclude
dictated goals are what the organization does.
Now we know
that the plans are nature specific plans and can’t be used anywhere else in
this department.
Problems with Organizing
Generally
organizing starts with a belief of work specialization Yes there is extreme
work specialization being followed in this field. There is a directorate of
marketing ,administration, finance, engineering,coordination,maintainence,operations,planning,horticulture
and Public relations all these 9 directorates come under 1 director general who is the head of the
organization. Everyone directorate has 1 director then an assistant director
then field manager further supervisory staff and then the shop floor workers
i-e the Mallis. So there are 8 directors of pha that take up all the
departments of PHA as of above except for the horticulture department. This
directorate has 5 directors these are head of 5 zones in Lahore. So we get to
know that there is extreme span of control in this organization one director
general has 13 directors underneath him ideally 3-4 must have been the case of
this organization. Unity of command lies with the director general himself in
the case of finance hiring and firing. There is no room of adaptive structure
in PHA people tend to work on what has been dictated in every department.
One major
characteristic we can derive from above is a simple structure there are no
teams employees tend to listen to their boss if they want to because the boss
i-e doesn’t have an authority to warn and fire. Neither has he had the
authority of hiring.
There is a high
degree of formalization in PHA they tend to do their work as being asked sometimes
dictations work. If rules are meant to be broken there is no specific code of
conduct these employees have to follow. Most of the times Gardeners in PHA go
on a strike on Sunday overtime which is a universal holiday they still want
more money. They don’t water plants they simply don’t do their duties as per
instructions. But there is a department of accountability missing in this
department who could actually check who’s doing his work who’s not?
There is
excessive centralization when it comes to case of making goals setting them
thinking them out. People are just given
work there is extreme centralization from the top to bottom that they have to
work it out themselves .No one gets a chance to throw in his idea. This has led to continuity in one
man’s idea as you should know most of the areas of Lahore are designed
according to one man’s idea despite of the fact the place could have looked
better in something else.