Senior appointments: Ombudsman told to frame service rules

Rules for appointment of senior officials not framed since 1997.

LAHORE:

The advisors and consultants at the ombudsman’s office are working without any service rules, The Express Tribune has learnt.

The Punjab government established the ombudsman’s office in 1997 and gave it the responsibility of protecting people’s rights, ensuring adherence to the law, diagnosing, redressing and rectifying any injustice done to a person through maladministration, and suppressing corrupt practices by government departments and agencies.

Under the Ombudsman Act of 1997, the ombudsman is allowed to appoint “advisors, consultants, fellows, bailiffs, interns, commissioners and experts as well as ministerial staff with or without remuneration to assist him in the discharge of his duties”.

On April 9, the secretary to Ombudsman Javed Mehmood – a retired bureaucrat who became the sixth Punjab ombudsman on March 13 – wrote to the finance secretary seeking a change in nomenclature for the post of consultant, in BS-19 and BS-20, to advisor, a post in BS-20 and BS-21.

The secretary wrote that this would entail no financial implications. Six officials are working as advisors in BS-20 and BS-21 and 16 retired bureaucrats are working as consultants in BS-19 and BS-20 in the ombudsman’s office.

In its reply, the Finance Department observed that the post of advisor exists in grades 19 to 21.

It said that any change in nomenclature would create ambiguities about the rank and seniority of officers working in different pay scales as advisors.

The department also noted that no rules had been framed for the advisors and consultants, which was “mandatory” under Section 36 of the Ombudsman Act. This section reads: “The Ombudsman may, with the approval of the Government, make rules for carrying out the purposes of this Act.”

Therefore, the ombudsman’s office should frame service rules for consultants and advisors before redesignating the posts “to ensure transparency in appointments”, said the Finance Department.

Transparency

After the Act was passed, it was the responsibility of the ombudsman’s office to draw up service rules in order to make the Act operational, said a senior official at the Services and General Administration Department on the condition of anonymity.

He said that the office was required to submit the rules to the Service Rules Committee of the S&GAD for approval. The committee would go through the rules and then forward them to the chief minister for approval, after which they would be notified.

The ombudsman’s office did send draft rules to the committee in 2000, but later withdrew them, the official said. He said that without these rules, appointments of advisors and consultants were non-transparent. “They are being appointed on the basis of like and dislike,” he said.

The Punjab government allocated Rs150.36 million to the ombudsman’s office for financial year 2013-14. As many as 283 officials, including 48 officers of grade-16 and above, work at the office.

Official response

In an official response sent via his director for public relations, the ombudsman said that the Act did not prevent the ombudsman from making appointments only if service rules had been framed because these were often contractual appointments.

He said that the office began drafting service rules for various categories of employees in 2001-02 and the rules for employees in grades 1 to 15 were notified in 2009. “This office again took up the matter with the S&GAD and since then the issue [has been] under the active consideration of the Service Rules Committee and is pending for finalisation,” it said.

The ombudsman’s office criticised the Finance Department’s response to its request, saying that it had mixed up the issue of nomenclature with rules regarding appointments, which was “not [in] the spirit of independent functioning of the ombudsman’s office as provided under the act”.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 23^rd, 2013.