Several public departments deprived of senior officials

Owing to a shortage of grade-20 and grade-21 government officers in Sindh, some public departments are being run without a secretary, The Express Tribune has learned.

As a result, efforts are being made to run the administrative affairs of the relevant departments by assigning additional charges to the secretaries of other departments. On the other hand, grade-19 officers have been appointed to some grade-20 posts.

According to sources, the federal government has been appointing fewer senior officers for Sindh, which has led to a shortage of grade-20 and grade-21 officers in the province.

The Centre has appointed some officers of the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) group in Sindh. There is a fixed 60 per cent quota for grade-20 posts in Sindh, earmarked for PAS officers. Meanwhile, a 65 per cent quota has been fixed for the district management group (DMG) officers for grade-21 posts.

However, officers are not appointed in Sindh as per the quota. One of the reasons is that the PAS group officers are either appointed as special secretaries or they are appointed on side posts.

Sources added that many PAS group officers did not come to Sindh for various reasons, one of which is the ongoing political tussle between the federal and provincial governments.

The Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) government in the Centre and the provincial Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government in Sindh have been at loggerheads, due to which the province is not provided with the officers of its choice by the Centre. Under such circumstances, some officers themselves do not want to be appointed in Sindh, in an attempt to avoid facing various political consequences later on.

Such a situation was encountered by a federal government official, Ahsan Mangi, during his appointment in Sindh. He was first appointed as the secretary of school education in Sindh and was later appointed as the chairperson of the Sindh chief minister’s inspection team. In both the cases, though, he faced political interference which eventually led him to return to the Centre.

Moreover, due to the National Accountability Bureau’s operations in government departments across Sindh, many senior federal government officials do not want to be appointed in the province to avoid scrutiny and trouble.

As a result of this shortage of senior officers in Sindh, departments running without secretaries include the school education department, the public health engineering department, the livestock department, the Sindh Investment Board, the Chief Minister Sindh’s inspection and inquiries team, and the information department, among others.

Additional charges of the said institutions have been handed over to the secretaries of other departments. While making such arrangements, a strange situation has arisen in some instances.

Per sources, a grade-20 officer, Baqir Abbas Rizvi, is serving as the administrative head of one department as well as the subordinate officer of another department’s head. He is the secretary of the college education department. At the same time, he has also been given the additional charge of special secretary in the finance department, thus, becoming a subordinate to Hassan Naqvi, the finance secretary.

A senior Sindh official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Express Tribune that there should be no shortage of officers in Sindh in light of the recommendations of the Dr Ishrat Hussain Service Reform Committee.

“According to the recommendations of the Service Reform Committee headed by Dr Ishrat Hussain, provincial officers should be appointed for the posts for which federal officers are not available. However, due to politics, this is not happening in Sindh.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 9^th, 2020.