Seniority matters: Bureaucrats resent stenographers’ promotion

See it as a reward for stenographer cadre’s opposition to PMSA protest.

LAHORE:

Twenty six stenographer-cadre officials were promoted as section officers two weeks ago on the basis of ‘fabricated documents’ to reward them for not supporting a Provincial Management Service Association (PMSA) protest against the district management group (DMG), several PCS officers allege. 

They said the officials had deliberately been promoted to basic payscale-17 (BS-17) only to hurt PMS officers.

They said that the promotions were granted by tampering with the seniority lists. Also, they added, these officers were paid six years arrears of BS-17 salaries and perks.

The officials regretted that the decision was taken despite the matter being sub-judice.

They said appeals against executive orders granting seniority to these officials were pending with the Provincial Services Tribunal (PST) for over a month.

They quoted a Supreme Court ruling of 2009 restraining departments concerned from any action, in seniority matters of civil servants pending with the PST, until the tribunal arrived at a decision.

They said hundreds of thousands of rupees had already been paid to these officers.

Talking to The Tribune, some of the officers promoted as section officers defended the decision and said that it had been due for a long time. The promoted officers said they had wrongly been denied a promotion to next scale for several years.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2011.