Deputation: a boon or bane?

THIS is apropos of the letter ‘Deputation: a bureaucratic menace’ (Nov 26). After going through which one gathers the impression that the entire bureaucratic corruption has been caused by people who are deputed.

The term deputation needs to be understood in its true perspective. According to the prevailing procedure, a government employee is said to be on deputation when he is temporarily transferred through due process to a post in another department or organisation which does not originally belong to the person deputed.

According to existing conventions between the provinces and the federation, deputation is a permanent feature of the mutual exchange of services between provincial employees and federal employees.

Available statistics makes it abundantly clear that federal employees working in the provinces on a transfer basis (i.e. on deputation) are thrice the number of all provincial employees working in the federation.

The provision of deputation in the service structure of employees, while providing horizontal and vertical movements, allows them to get exposure to a variety of experiences.

No seasoned and known career civil servant in the civil service history of Pakistan has ever clung either to a single post or a single department in his entire service career.

Deputation is protected under statutory rules passed by both provincial and federal legislatures governing civil servants of both provincial and federal cadres in the shape of Civil Servant Acts.

Deputation in itself is neither good nor bad. It is bad governance and mismanagement which is the root cause of bureaucratic corruption and not deputation itself, which is simply a procedure for transferring an officer from one cadre to another.

M. NADEEM BUTT
Islamabad

Dawn.