Bureaucratic woes: Promotions of around 300 CSP officers pending

PESHAWAR:

It will be difficult to find any record with the Federal Board of Revenue on the exact status of promotions and any violations in the promotion quota for civil servants before 1999. This has resulted in problems for many officers.

Provincial Management Services (PMS) officers have already expressed their resentment over not being promoted and a move up for around 300 Civil Service Pakistan (CSP) officers is also on hold.

In paragraph-wise comments, the FBR said before the Peshawar High Court on December 2, 2014 that there were 22 excessive posts in the income tax department. It added the calculations were made between 1999 and 2003.

According to the documents submitted in court, former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had relaxed the rules. The Civil Servants Act 1973 states that appointments to an all Pakistan service or to a civil service of the federation or to a civil post in connection with the affairs of the federation, including any civil post connected with defence, shall be made in the prescribed manner by the president or by a person authorised by the president on that behalf.

As such, 34 assistant commissioners of the Income Tax department were promoted.

The establishment division of the cabinet secretariat, in a memorandum dated February 25, 2014, stated that initial recruitment against BS-17 posts is made in 12 occupational groups/cadres through competitive examination conducted by the Federal Public Service Commission.

This has created a backlog for officers who have to wait for their promotions due to pending decisions and interdepartmental confusions.

Civil servants who do not belong to any of these cadres and hail from any posts outside the domain of the occupational groups can be absorbed against a post falling in the cadres of the 12 occupational groups/cadres.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 15^th, 2015.