LAHORE - If on one hand, the new provincial administration seemed to be still trying its hard to develop its own team at every level - mainly from administrative secretaries to the District Coordination Officers and District Police Officers - in turn heads of various departments and sections are also endeavouring to pick 'right' kind of people, while rejecting the incumbents tracing their links to the previous political and administrative dispensations. While quite a few senior officers consider the 'chosen' ones as the deliverers and willing workers, while the rest are tagging their subordinates as sluggish and incompetent consequent upon the laid-back approach of the previous administration, and continuous comforting spanning over the last eight years. "Majority of the officers and officials are needed to be woken up from deep slumber, while the rest, who are willing workers, is a rarity. Hence it is better that one chooses officers from the best available lot, while rejecting the workers shirkers," said a senior officer, while acknowledging the fact that persistent efforts at 'developing teams' only had resulted hampering of work. "During the previous weeks, everyone was expecting to be transferred sooner or later, and kept on waiting for the orders. Resultantly, work was hampered," he concluded. A visibly disenchanted officer with the present administration was of the view that it would have been better if the administration had gone slow on transfer-postings front, while energy could have been spent on actualising objectives and targets. "Instead of imposing an emergency sort of situation on transfers and postings, where every day a large number of officers and officials are ordered to pack off to distant places or making them Officers on Special Duty, the 'commanders' should have gone slow, and asked the incumbents to deliver. Look A secretary or additional secretary would not have run away, rather he must have delivered, though to a less extent," he maintained, while pointing out that the large scale reshuffles had caused harassment among the bureaucracy. "Majority of the officers have turned against the present administration - though never been vocal about it - because they are not certain about their postings and working span at a particular seat. Order the officers, and get the job done instead of transferring and posting them to far-flung places, considering them either a failure or resenting them on the pretext that they were the blue-eyed officers of the past," he suggested. Another officer negated the impression that the administration was victimising those officers, who were pretty close to their previous bosses. "Only few are being victimised on the basis of their previous connections, which is primarily due to two reasons. One, they crossed all limits in supporting the previous government and forgot about their allegiance to the state. Secondly, they indulged in corruption and developed a dubious repute, not only among their own class rather among the people as well. However, this has also created water-tight compartmentalisation within the bureaucracy," he opined, while believing that they should be punished. He confided that heads of the departments were now tracking down good officers from other departments, and were being 'requested' to work with them. "This is being done at a personal level with the obvious clearance from the higher authorities. This has given rise to the perception among officers about the most wanted and the rejected ones. Impartiality does come from the highest level, and then it oozes to the lower ranks," he averred, while stating that certain sense of scepticism was inherently placed in the minds of the senior officers about those who have been working here since long. "It is beyond any doubt that these people might have forgotten how to work hard and earnestly, and they might have been disinterested in work, but it does not mean that all of them fall in the same category," he said. "However, there is a class of officers, who has been working with foreign-funded projects since long. Now they have become more interested in sticking to those slots considering various benefits, like huge bucks and relaxed working environment. Now in comparison to the Secretariat or field working, where one can be asked either to sit or stay in the field for long hours, they will like to stick to those seats," he believed, while appreciating the government decision of bringing those projects and officers in the main stream. "Get them out of their comfort zones and put them to work with their equals," he maintained. "We see a civil officers' premier league in the making. Will all this change the attitude of the officers, who are inherently corrupt and sluggish?" questioned an officer, while spelling out his scepticism about the efforts being made, either feverish or well-thought out.