EDITORIAL: It turns out that sixteen years after the 18th Constitutional Amendment transferred major responsibilities to the provinces the federal government is still operating 17 ministries in areas that were devolved. This extraordinary failure has now prompted a Senate subcommittee to give the government two weeks to wind up ministries dealing with subjects, including health, education, agriculture, climate change, industries, culture and planning and development.
The committee has even raised the possibility of summoning Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif over non-compliance. For something constitutionally settled so long ago to remain administratively unsettled today is an indictment of the way government functions.
The 18th Amendment became part of the Constitution in April 2010 yet federal bureaucratic structures dealing with devolved subjects have survived. The government argues that some ministries are required to fulfil international commitments and facilitate coordination, an explanation the Senate committee has rightly rejected on constitutional grounds. Sixteen years should surely have been enough time to establish whatever legitimate coordination mechanisms were required without preserving entire federal structures in areas transferred to the provinces.
This is unacceptable, especially considering the importance of the subjects involved. Education, health, agriculture, climate change and industry directly affect economic performance, human development and everyday life. Divided or overlapping responsibility in such areas inevitably complicates policymaking and accountability.
When functions overlap, expenditure is duplicated, administrative boundaries become blurred and governments acquire the convenient ability to blame another tier when outcomes deteriorate. Pakistan already suffers from weak implementation; adding institutional confusion can only make matters worse.
There is also a familiar bureaucratic problem at work. Government departments and ministries rarely surrender authority willingly. They come with budgets, posts, influence and control over resources, all of which create powerful incentives for institutional survival long after the original justification has disappeared. This is where administrative inefficiency begins to overlap with the patronage and corruption that have plagued governance for decades. Successive governments regularly promise right-sizing, rationalisation and reduced expenditure, yet structures that should have disappeared under a constitutional reform completed more than a decade ago remain firmly in place.
The episode also provides useful perspective for the suddenly fashionable debate about creating new provinces and administrative units. Such proposals may well deserve consideration, but the spectacle of the federal government struggling to complete a constitutional reorganisation agreed upon in 2010 should temper confidence in grand new schemes.
Before designing additional administrative structures, policymakers might examine why existing constitutional arrangements have proved so difficult to implement. The lesson concerns state capacity as much as political intent.
More immediately, there is no justification for allowing the present situation to drift any further. The Senate committee has given the government two weeks to act. That deadline should produce a clear account of which functions remain at the federal level, why they remain there, what legal authority supports their continuation and how the government intends to complete the outstanding devolution. If genuine constitutional complications exist, they should be identified transparently and resolved through the proper process.
The larger failure is one of governance. Pakistan passes reforms, creates implementation mechanisms, declares exercises complete and then discovers years later that significant parts of the old machinery are still functioning. Inefficiency, institutional inertia and vested interests have repeatedly turned reform into an exercise conducted largely on paper.
Sixteen years after the 18th Amendment, there can be no credible plea for more time. The Constitution settled the direction of travel long ago. The government now needs to explain why 17 ministries apparently missed the departure.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
