Federal bureaucracy: Rural Sindh grabs more than its share

Officials from Punjab dominate bureaucracy’s upper echelon.


Our Correspondent February 01, 2013
For grades 21 and 22, 298 of the 507 employees have a Punjab domicile, that is 73 per cent of the positions in these grades. DESIGN: ESSA MALIK

ISLAMABAD:


Candidates from rural Sindh marked the greatest annual increase in the number of federal government employees in 2010-11, in defiance of the quota specified for them.


According to the Annual Statistical Bulletin of Federal Government Employees 2010-11, the number of employees from rural Sindh, which excludes Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur, increased by 29.23 per cent from 2009 to 2011.

The bulletin is maintained and released by the Establishment Division’s Pakistan Public Administration Research Centre. Sindh has a total quota of 19 per cent, which is divided 60-40 between rural and urban areas.

Of the 449,964 employees in grades 1 to 22, 46.58 per cent or 201,636 belonged to Punjab including Islamabad, according to the bulletin. For grades 17 to 22, the share of Punjab including Islamabad rose to around 57 per cent, which is more than the 50 per cent quota reserved for Punjab in the government’s general recruitment policy.

Punjab dominates bureaucracy’s upper echelon. For grades 21 and 22, 298 of the 507 employees have a Punjab domicile, that is 73 per cent of the positions in these grades.

In the 207 autonomous organisations, semi-autonomous bodies and corporations under the federal government, Punjab’s share was 54.4 % among 369,285 employees. The statistical bulletin noted that the share was against an employment quota of 50%, but it cannot be said with certainty whether the excess was a violation or if employees hired on merit had a Punjab domicile.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) is second with 27.9 per cent employees. Around 94,000 employees of the civil armed forces, which includes the Frontier Corps and fall under the Ministry of Interior, have a K-P domicile, according to the bulletin statistics.

Sanctioned federal government posts stood at 509,239 in 2010-11, a 1.86 per cent increase compared to 2009-10. Around 12 per cent of these posts remained vacant during 2010-11.

Women’s representation

Although, the number of female employees increased  in the federal government, women still have a long way to catch up with their male colleagues.

The actual strength of female employees increased to 21,133 in 2010-11 from 20,257 in 2009-10, their percentage share of the total workforce is still below five percent, according to statistics.

However, the actual number of female employees in the federal government increased at the rate of 16.6 per cent from 2007 to 2011. Around a quarter of the female workforce is employed by the education division.

According to the Federal Public Service Commission’s general recruitment policy, 10 per cent quota will be reserved for women from the share of each province or region.

The number of female employees, working for autonomous bodies and corporations increased by 15.8 per cent in 2010-11 to 15,114.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 1st, 2013.

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