Room at the top: No promotions in sight as bureaucratic vacuum grows

Over 100 senior civil servants are due to retire next year

ISLAMABAD: With over 100 senior civil servants, federal secretaries and police officers set to retire over next year, the government has yet to convene a meeting of the Central Selection Board (CSB) to fill the growing vacuum at the top level of the bureaucracy.

Due to a combination of court injunctions and lethargy on its own part, the government has been unable to convene the CSB to promote the next lot of officers to grade 20 and above even after the lapse of a year and a half. The CSB is considered the highest authority for promotion of grade 20 and above officers serving in different sections of government.

A CSB meeting was last held in May 2015. The government could not convene the board again after some civil servants moved the Islamabad High Court and later the Supreme Court with some promotion-related concerns and obtained a stay order.



A senior official, however, told The Express Tribune that the government itself was not very interested in convening the CSB. “They prefer to run affairs on an ad-hoc basis,” he said. “If they were really concerned, they could simply have filed an application requesting the court to hold hearings on a daily basis and issue some observations at the earliest to avoid blocking promotions.”

Although the Supreme Court is likely announce its verdict on the matter soon now, in the time that has lapsed, the government ought to have held three CSB meetings according to relevant rules. The government must hold at least two CSB meetings every year under Establishment Division promotion rules.

A senior Establishment Division official told The Express Tribune that there are over 500 posts that are vacant at the top level which is a real concern. The slots include those of additional secretaries of various ministries and departments, he said.

In addition to that, 11 secretaries, three chief secretaries and three inspector generals of police (IGPs) are among the senior bureaucrats set to retire by the end of 2017. The secretaries include those of finance, Federal Board of Revenue, states and frontier regions, information, defence and inter-provincial coordination while the chief secretaries set to retire belong to Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P). The retiring IGPs belong to Punjab, K-P and Balochistan.

The Establishment Division official said the delay in promotions had resulted in demotivating officers next in line for top bureaucratic slots. “There is a disgruntlement among the officers while a backlog of promotions accumulates,” the official said.

In October, Establishment Division Secretary Tahir Shahbaz complained before a Senate body about the growing number of vacant posts in administrative and police services.



There are about 200 cases of grade 20 and 21 bureaucrats who have approached different courts in the country. The number crosses 500 if grades lower than 20 are considered.

Vacant posts

According to documents available with The Express Tribune, the vacancy situation is abysmal in the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS), previously known as the District Management Group.

Of the 113 Basic Pay Scale (BPS) 21 posts available, 43 are currently vacant while 176 of the 289 BPS 20 posts are unfilled. The situation is even worse for BPS 19 posts, 285 of which are vacant out of a total 402.

When it comes to provinces, Balochistan fares the worst where 80% of BPS 21 posts, 78% of BPS 20 posts and 54% of BPS 19 posts are vacant in PAS alone, according to documents. Sindh fares slightly better with eight BPS 21, 58 BPS 20 and 113 BPS 19 posts currently empty.

In K-P, five out of 10 grade 21 seats, 20 out 44 grade 20 seats and 44 out of 60 grade 19 seats are vacant.

Meanwhile, six grade 21 seats and 34 grade 20 seats are currently vacant in Punjab.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2016.