Proposal to rename bureaucracy overseer pending with PM. PHOTO: AFP
The federal government has decided to revamp its establishment division — the premier body responsible for career planning, promotions, transfers and postings of bureaucrats in the country. A draft proposal, including renaming the division and changes in its outdated system, is pending final approval of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
The government’s administrative arm regulates all matters of general applicability to public service officers between grade 17 and grade 22. It has often been criticised for preferential promotions under political and bureaucratic pressures with its annual confidential report (ACR) system frequently questioned.
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In January, ED Secretary Nadeem Hassan Asif admitted before a parliamentary body the ACR, including the promotion criterion, needed improvements.
He had talked at length about the policy of promotion, criteria for marks and formation of selection board coupled with improvements in the process.
Around 190 officers in several cadres have gone to court against the selection board’s decisions for their promotion over different reasons.
What needs to change?
The proposal suggests transformation of the establishment division into a human resource management division and includes the rationale and outlines about the structure of change.
According to the draft, the change would overcome shortcomings in the existing structure including overlapping of functions among different department and clarify the parameters for each wing.
Similarly, the change will lessen interdependency on other wings to perform assigned functions and help accelerate work at the division, where a routine file from a ministry takes several months to get approved.
In the current structure, a few wings and sections have more operational powers that result in operational difficulties. The new recommendations would balance the powers among several departments.
The draft also calls for replacing the existing eight wings by seven new ones with improved mandate and powers.
The performance management directorate would look after the central selection board, including ACRs of the civil servants. The newest addition will be the e-government directorate, putting all documentation and correspondence online. Several sections have already started working on this.
The division will also send recommendations to the relevant Senate body about improvements in the central selection board, avoiding outside influence and promoting civil servants on merit.
Senate’s Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat Chairperson Talha Mehmood had also raised questions about the promotion of officers from grade 21 to grade 22. He had asked as to how bureaucrats, whose cases were in an accountability body or were convicted, got promoted.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 14th, 2016.
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