KARACHI: On December 7, the Supreme Court had directed the federal government to furnish a list of retired civil servants who had been re-employed.
The law says that a retired civil servant shall not be re-employed unless such re-employment was necessary in the public interest and is made with the prior approval of the authority above the appointing authority. The Supreme Court had directed earlier that re-employment could only be done in extraordinary circumstances when a person was “indispensable” for a job and no serving officer of required expertise, experience and requisite qualification was available.
Since re-employed civil servants are usually well-connected (or else they wouldn’t have been re-employed), they tend to treat themselves above the law. The government should heed the apex court’s directive in letter and spirit.
Muhammad Javed
Published in The Express Tribune, December 17th, 2012.
