LAHORE: The Pakistan Administrative Service Association (PASA) has strongly condemned what it described as an escalating campaign of indiscriminate and unsubstantiated attacks against civil servants, rejecting attempts to portray Pakistan’s bureaucracy as a “Corruptocracy” and warning that legal and institutional action may be pursued against individuals involved in spreading false and defamatory allegations.
In a strongly worded statement issued on Thursday, the association expressed “profound concern” over what it termed the growing normalisation of vilification directed at civil servants in public discourse, arguing that broad-brush accusations against an entire service cadre were not only unfair and factually unsupported but also damaging to state institutions and the principles of justice, accountability and due process.
The association said recent commentary in both traditional and digital media had increasingly featured reckless allegations against civil servants, often without evidence or factual substantiation. Such narratives, it argued, risk creating a misleading public perception of the bureaucracy while undermining confidence in institutions that play a central role in governance and public service delivery.
While acknowledging that no public institution should be immune from criticism or accountability, PASA stressed that criticism must remain evidence-based and directed at specific instances of wrongdoing rather than entire institutions or professional groups.
The association warned that sweeping characterizations portraying all civil servants as corrupt could have far-reaching consequences for governance.
