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Mismanagement reigns supreme at PCSIR
By Perwez Abdullah
Karachi
The Pakistan Council of Scientific
and Industrial Research (PCSIR) continues to perform erratically,
while the employees of the organisation seem unanswerable to anyone
on the basis of being hired by the government, The News has learnt.
The science and research facility,
which flourished under the patronage of prestigious scientist Dr
Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, the PCSIR is mired in mismanagement and
suffers from lack of professionalism, perhaps the reason for a
decline in research activities.
Sources allege that the worst part of
the organisation’s management strategy is putting the wrong person
in the wrong place. As a result, the Pakistan Journal of Scientific
and Industrial Research (PJSIR) is bearing the brunt of this poor
judgment.
The management has brought
researchers to head the scientific journal with no editorial
experience and with no published papers of their own, often seeming
clueless about how to maintain or improve the standard of the
journal.
The Scientific Information Centre
(CIS) that publishes the journal bi-monthly is housed in a decrepit
building. It looks like the PCSIR management has put the SIC at the
bottom of its priorities. SIC has seen 10 directors in 17 years,
none of them with any editing or publishing experience. Dr Abdus
Salam, who was the director about five years ago, had hit the
retirement age when he was appointed at grade 20 but was still given
the perks that come with post.
Dr Kaneez Fizza Azhar, who followed
Dr Abdus Salam, also came from a research lab and had no knowledge
about printing or publishing. Thus, the journal’s quality further
declined during this period. An example of one of the many mistakes
found in the journal during her tenure is the publishing of the
research paper “An Experimental Investigation pf PAH Emissions from
a Heavy Duty Diesel Engine Fuelled with Bio-diesel and its Blend”
(November 2008) under the category of physical sciences when it
should have actually appeared under technology.
The current Director, SIC, Dr Arfa
Yasmin joined the organisation a month ago with little knowledge of
publishing. When The News contacted her, requesting her to discuss
the four PCSIR research projects stipulated in the Research and
Development Programme 2007-2008, she refused. “I cannot discuss
anything with anyone. You can put these questions to the Minister
(Science and Technology Minister, Azam Swati),” she said. Dr Yasmin
also refused to explain how she could serve as Director when she had
to work on four scientific projects.
Dr Yasmin also declined to answer if
she had written research and review papers and how many of those had
been published; nor did she respond to whether or not she had been
the editor of any magazine before. In fact, she told The News that
she is not obligated to answer any questions.
Other such examples of mismanagement
include the Director Fuel Research Centre (FRC) who specialises in
Food and Marine Science and the head of the Leather Research Centre
who specialises in Myco Toxins. “The leather industry of Pakistan is
quite important and could have brought in a great deal of foreign
exchange but because of this (bad governance), the industry is in
tatters. It speaks volumes about the bureaucrats who are enjoying
fat salaries and innumerable perks but are not giving anything to
their country,” a senior scientist, requesting anonymity, lamented.
The News:
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
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