Administrative ministries and divisions shall ensure merit and transparency in the recruitment process at all levels
LAHORE: In the past one year, the present government made several decisions in violation of merit. Unfortunately, this is part of a system of political patronage where governments reward their favourites and in the process, those who deserve to get jobs on merit, are sidelined. The government has excluded the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan and the Competition Commission of Pakistan from the purview of the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) for selection of heads of public-sector organisations. In effect, these two regulators can recruit people to key posts without a competitive, transparent process. In a recent case, the Supreme Court ruled that all posts in government organisations, corporations, companies and establishments must be filled through a competitive, credible, fair, open and transparent process.
The Islamabad High Court also recently suspended the Establishment Division’s notification for the exclusion of 32 entities from the purview of the FPSC. The government announced its recruitment policy for federal services, autonomous bodies and corporations, a little over a month after it lifted a ban on recruitment for federal jobs. The new policy says that merit would be followed in filling vacancies at the federal level. It says that recruitments to posts in grade 16 and above would continue to be made through the FPSC. It also said that initial appointments to posts, which are required to be made on an all-Pakistan basis, would be made under Rule 14 of the Civil Servants (Appointment, Promotion & Transfer) Rules, 1973.
The policy says that initial appointments to posts in grades three to 15 and equivalent in offices, which are required to serve only in a particular province or region, would be filled by appointment of persons domiciled in the province or region, according to Rule 15 of the Civil Servants (Appointment, Promotion & Transfer) Rules, 1973. Administrative ministries and divisions shall ensure merit and transparency in the recruitment process at all levels. Clearly, the government’s own policy in terms of recruiting people to public-sector jobs is sound but can we expect it to be implemented and without any sector or organisation being exempted?
Mohammed Arifeen
Published in The Express Tribune, November 17th, 2014.
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