Rescue officials denied promotion for a decade

Woes of rescuers aggravated by absence of service structure

LAHORE:

On July 16, a large number of rescue officials completed 10 years of service on the same ranks since their regularisation.

This is contrary to the timescale promotion policy of the government. The policy envisaged that government employees having served on the same rank for 10 years would be promoted to the next rank. However, the right has been denied to the rescuers who were regularised in 2010.

The woes of rescuers have been aggravated because of the absence of a service structure. They have been time and again promised fulfillment of their demands in this regard.

Last year, Chief Minister Usman Buzdar visited the rescue headquarters on the service’s 14th anniversary and promised the rescuers introduction of a service structure soon and resumption of the emergency allowance.

However, despite the passage of passing of several months, no headway has been made in fulfilling the promises.

Few years back, when Arshad Zia took charge as director general of the service in place of Rizwan Naseer, he promised in his inaugural speech that a service structure for the rescue officials would be introduced

Both the announcements won applause for acknowledgment of the longstanding issue of the rescuers.

The day of the completion of 10 years without promotion of the officials passed at a time when Dr Rizwan Naseer was knocking every possible door for his regularisation on the post of DG Rescue 1122.

Besides approaching the Lahore High Court, the information wing of Rescue 1122 issued a press release on the sub judice matter of his petition for regularisation.

A press release issued a few days back once again promised the rescuers regularization of their service “The Director General Punjab Emergency Service Dr Rizwan Naseer said the matter of the regularisation of the 2nd batch comprising 3,227 rescue staff of Punjab Emergency Service is in the final stage and the notification shall be issued soon as per Punjab Regularisation of Service Act 2018.”

The level of interest of the authorities in the plight of the rescue workers can be gauged from the fact that the meeting of the Punjab Emergency Council was held after a gap of almost nine years.

However, the sole agenda of the meeting was the appointment of Rizwan Naseer as DG.

A number of rescuers believe that certain quarters in the top brass of Rescue 1122, who have been reigning over its affairs for a long period, were the biggest hurdle in the way of approval of the service structure as it may prove to be a challenge to their monopoly.

An official said there was no officer above grade 18 in Rescue 1122 other than DG Rizwan Naseer. He said promotions would lead to sharing of power and put a hold to the unbridled use of authority.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 20^th, 2020.