Number of vacant posts at federal level reaches 78,623

Interior Division is the largest administrative unit due to CAF

ISLAMABAD: The number of vacant posts in BPS-1 to BPS-22 has reached an all-time high, with as many as 78,623 positions out of 640,000 employees have yet to be filled across the country.

The number was about 65,856 in 2015, according to the data of civil servants, gazette and non-gazette employees, women, and non-Muslims working in the federal government, ministries divisions and its attached departments.

The latest report of the Establishment Division -- 2016-17 – shares, interesting figures about the federal government employees spread across the country.

The data

The sanctioned post of employees is 0.694 million in which 0.57 million are filled and about 78,623 are vacant positions. The number is increasing with every year.

Out of total actual working strength of BPS-1 to BPS-22, only 27,858 posts are occupied -- by civil servants in BPS-17 to BPS-22.

The basic pay scale-wise analysis indicates that BPS-1 to BPS-4 has the largest share of 28.36 per cent among the total 542,695 working employees in BPS 1-16 in the federal government.



The numbers of vacant posts vary from grade to grade 22 as grade one has a shortage of 12,636 employees. However, the deficit is 9,035 for BPS-16. The highest shortage is in grade five -- 1,278. Similarly, the vacant posts are about 5,000 in BPS-17; 3,000 in BPS-18, 356 in grade 20; 140 in grade 21 and 18 in grade 22.

A total 549,609 employees of the federal government have been working in attached departments and subordinate offices other than the main secretariat and among those employees, 23,833 have been working in BPS-17 to BPS-22 while 525,776 are working in BPS-1 to BPS-16.

Manpower distribution

Amongst the federal government divisions, the Interior Division is the largest administrative unit due to Civil Armed Forces (CAF), which comes out to be 34.40 per cent (197,701) of the actual working strength (570,533). The second largest unit is the Defence Division with 20.06 per cent while Railways has 13.24 per cent, Communication and Postal Services has 6.18 per cent, and Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan has 5.79 per cent as compared to the other divisions having a share of 19.89 per cent.

Female employees

The actual strength of female employees for the year 2016-17 is 31,281 against 23,298 in the previous report, indicating a significant increase of 34.26 per cent as compared to 2015-16. Out of the total strength of 570,553 federal government employees, the percentage share of female employees in public sector stands at 5.48 per cent during 2016-17.



The distribution of actual strength also shows that 19.79 per cent posts are occupied by the female officers in BS 17-22 and remaining share of 80.21 per cent goes to BS 1-16 female employees out of 31,281 total female employees.

Provincial breakup

The overall share of the provinces on the basis of their quota including CAF in actual working strength of 570,553 employees shows that Punjab has 47.10 per cent share including 1.92 per cent of Islamabad, followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which has 24.55 per cent share.

Similarly, Sindh has 14.03 per cent share (Sindh Rural 8.18% and Sindh Urban 5.85%) while share for G-B, Balochistan, FATA and Azad Jammu and Kashmir remain 6.55 per cent, 4.07 per cent, 2.44 per cent and 1.26 per cent respectively.

A similar trend has also been seen in the female employment in the federal government. Punjab, including 7.60 per cent share of Islamabad enjoys the largest share of female employment to the ratio of 59.30 per cent, followed by Sindh 13.08 per cent (Sindh Rural 6.40% and Sindh Urban 6.68%), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 7.36 per cent, Balochistan 2.49 per cent, whereas, G-B, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and FATA occupy 15.50 per cent, 1.33 per cent and 0.94 per cent posts, respectively.

Non-Muslims

Out of the total strength of 16,133 the federal government non-Muslim employees, a sizable number of 14,730 (91.30%) are Christians, whereas 224 (1.39%) are Ahmedi, 956 (5.93%) are Hindus (caste), 176 (1.09%) are Hindus (non-caste), 13 (0.08%) are Sikhs and 34 (0.21%) belong to the other non-Muslim religions.

MP Scales

The data about Management Postion (MP) scales reveal that there are total 49 officers working in the federal government offices. Out of the 49 officers, 17 are working in MP-I, 16 in MP-II and 16 in MP-III.