ZUBAIR QURESHI
President Dr Arif Alvi has called for promoting greater cooperation between Sri Lanka and Pakistan particularly in trade, economy and education. The President expressed these views while talking to a delegation of Senior Civil Servants of Sri Lanka, at Aiwan-e-Sadr on Thursday.
Currently, 20 Senior Sri Lankan civil servants are attending a two-week training programme related to International Relations (IR), Peace and Strategic Studies, Public Policy, Leadership and Management, at the National Defence University (NDU), Islamabad.
The Lankan senior civil servants are currently attending an Executive Training Programme which aims to impart modern knowledge and techniques to civil servants to ensure good governance and efficient service delivery, besides promoting mutual understanding among civil services and academia of Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The president while wishing the Sri Lankan officers a good and productive stay during their training period, said both the brotherly countries enjoyed cordial relations that needed to further expand for the mutual benefit. He underscored the need for increased cooperation in the areas of higher education, academia, and research to promote mutual understanding between the people of both countries.
President Alvi also urged bureaucracy to be responsive to people’s needs, improve the system’s efficiency, and their capacity and intellect for ensuring fast-paced development. He said that developing countries should focus on the development of education and health sectors, besides making fast decisions to help address the challenges being faced by them.
The president said that bureaucrats and politicians must adapt themselves to emerging technologies and make timely decisions to build intellectual pathways for the development of the IT sector.
He said the intellectual edge made nations great, and countries should focus on developing knowledge economies and investing in the intellectual development of their people. He stated that developing countries could achieve accelerated economic growth by focusing on the development of the IT sector and adopting conducive business policies.
The president also highlighted the need to become more financially disciplined to overcome perennial financial issues of developing countries. He added that common people alone could not be burdened again and again to bear the brunt of bad economic decisions and the elites must also share the burden for the greater good of the country. He further stated that decision-makers and bureaucracy must change their attitude and mindset to help resolve people’s issues.
While responding to a question about regional cooperation, the president stressed the need for greater economic cooperation among the South Asian countries that would bring greater prosperity to the people of the region.
