OMG officers move SC to oust deputationists

Waseem Abbasi
Sunday, April 21, 2013

ISLAMABAD: Around 150 officers of the Office Management Group (OMG) have petitioned the Supreme Court for the repatriation of over 300 officers brought to the Federal Secretariat on deputation by the former PPP government.

The petition prays that all deputationists be repatriated to their parent departments as had been done in the case of Sindh deputationists on the orders of the Supreme Court in accordance with the OMG constitution. The OMG officers are of the view that the group, a CSS cadre, was being destroyed by adjusting unqualified deputationists, who were allegedly hired by the PPP government because of their political loyalties.

According to them, out of 50 sanctioned posts of section officers in the Establishment Division, 36 were occupied by deputationists, who were mostly school teachers, veterinary doctors and other non-cadre officials.

“Deputationists have become a mafia at the Establishment Division and CSS officers OMG are not given postings in the Establishment Division,” reads the petition.

They alleged that these deputationists were cronies and favourites of politicians and were creating governance issues by toeing the lines of their masters.

Most of these officers have completed their five-year term. There are 750 posts in the OMG and the quota for officers on deputation is 5 per cent that is equivalent to 37 officers, but the former government placed around 300 deputationists in the group

The News

FPSC has announced the result of Section Officers Promotional Exam-2012.
Details are here:

http://fpsc.gov.pk/icms/admin/news/r...ss%20Query.pdf

GEORGE Bernard Shaw said, “I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.” The same can be said in light of last week’s elections.

Civil servants are of the essence in terms of fair elections. In an article published in this space last week, the very experienced former civil servant Kunwar Idris said that “woefully, the standards both of personal ethics and commitment to a code of conduct among officials have been steadily declining because the principle of merit has been progressively abandoned in their recruitment, placement and promotion”.

I would like to take the argument to the next level and propose an out-of-the-box solution to inculcate institutional integrity in the civil service. But before that, a brief history of the politicisation of Pakistan’s civil service.

From 1947 to 1971 the civilian bureaucracy was largely independent and the politicians had hardly any influence. The constitutions of 1956, 1962 and the interim constitution of 1972 provided safeguards for civil servants against dismissals, demotions or compulsory retirements on political or nepotistic grounds. The bureaucracy, particularly the elite Civil Service of Pakistan, maintained its integrity and institutional autonomy by virtue of reasonable control over the selection, training and posting of its members.

The downfall of Ayub Khan and the rise of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, however, gave the political class an opportunity to assert its power. Once the eastern half of the country seceded, the military and the civil bureaucracy were left severely discredited. The former managed to hold its own owing to the nature of the institution, but the structure of the civil bureaucracy was turned upside down.

Bhutto decided to redress the power imbalance between the elected and unelected institutions of the state by withdrawing constitutional protections for civil servants in the 1973 Constitution. The seeds of political influence in the functioning of the permanent executive of the country were sown and political manipulation became a norm.

The civil bureaucracy became even more complacent when, instead of rebuilding the system, subsequent military regimes eroded it further through measures such as large-scale inductions from the military and showed a general distrust for civil servants. Over time, bureaucrats lost the plot altogether and became the most obedient servants of the rulers or rulers-in-waiting instead of the state; they became puppets in the hands of the rulers, military and political.

Can the problem now be reversed? The best bet under the present circumstances would be to provide the civil service with a nucleus — a godfather, so to speak — that each pillar pivotal to the governance of the state of Pakistan already has.

The Pakistan Army as an institution always has a patron in the form of the army chief. The office of the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan has seen a meteoric rise in stature and this ascent has been institutional rather than on an individual level.

The political executive and legislature is on track and towering leaders will emerge in due course. The media, by virtue of matchless influence in forming public opinion, is its own godfather. This leaves the civil service as practically the only institution that lacks direction and strength of purpose. The only way to provide the requisite strength to this pillar of state is by allowing for a ‘chief’ of the civil service. The incumbent to such office would be appointed for a fixed term protected by the Constitution, neither extendable nor terminable.

The establishment division of the cabinet secretariat might claim to be performing a similar function already, but events such as someone as senior as the establishment secretary being made ‘officer on special deputation’ overnight or succumbing to political pressures to allow illegal inductions in the civil service leave little merit to that claim.

With a chief of the civil services, nobody — not even the sitting prime minister or one in waiting — would be able to influence him for administrative matters such as appointments, transfers, postings and recruitments. This would provide unflinching resolve for civil servants in taking decisions without pressure.

But there’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, one being the requirement of a constitutional amendment for the setting-up of such an office. All the political parties promised change in the build-up to the elections; the question is, once in the driver’s seat will they remain committed to real change or settle on a cosmetic one? Also, can an opposition that promises to be real push through some real change?

Such measures, being far from public focus, might not bring new votes and would actually block the way of bogus ones. Yet they would be the vanguard of the real change people so richly deserve for showing their faith in democracy by coming out to vote. The suggested change in the structure of the civil service is akin to keeping an endangered species in protective custody until it’s strong enough to survive in the wild: there’s no doubt that the ‘most obedient servant of the state’ is an endangered species.

The writer is a civil servant.

DAWN

Civil service reforms needed’

THIS is apropos of Syed Saadat’s article ‘Civil service reforms needed’ (May 21). The writer has rightly traced the genesis of the rot prevailing in the ranks of civil bureaucracy, but one would beg to differ with his out-of-the-box solution of appointing ‘a godfather’ to protect civil servants against all kinds of political pressures.

The decay in governance started the day constitutional safeguards were withdrawn to the great disadvantage of civil servants. The imbalance between the individual merit and professionalism of a civil servant vis-a-vis political patronage can only be corrected by restoring the constitutional safeguards against arbitrary transfers, denial of promotion and selective accountability of civil servants by rulers.

The administrative reforms subsequent to the 1973 reforms stipulated the legal framework (s) to redress the grievances of civil servants but proved ineffective and inadequate to provide the requisite relief, especially to those civil servants who opted to tread the right path.

On the other hand, those who played a partisan role were rewarded with prized postings, promotions and other benefits. As a result, a widespread conversion to cronyism, by the civil servants of all hue, has occurred which has devoured the very concept of ‘good governance’.

Therefore, it is time constitutional safeguards were restored to provide a comfortable working environment to civil servants who should deliver, honestly and impartially, without let or fear and become the agents of change.

NAGUIB ULLAH MALIK
Islamabad

DAWN

Civil servants dichotomised
By Anjum Niaz

Nawaz Sharif has chosen wisely and well. His top official, according to press reports, will be Nasir Mahmood Khosa. As principal secretary to the prime minister, he will set the course for the federal secretaries and their juniors on all things administrative. He has under his belt experience of running three provinces – Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab – as chief secretary. Something unprecedented in the history of the premier service.

A principal secretary can be a blessing or a curse for his prime minister.

I don’t make this statement lightly. He is the most powerful man in the PM secretariat. He is a supra-bureaucrat whose commands go unchallenged. We may have forgotten that this one post pulled down the civilian governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif in the past. Both the prime ministers appointed men they trusted to carry out their wishes – fair or unfair, right or wrong. More a Man Friday than a professional civil servant, the principal secretary was seen as a reliable assistant to the prime minister, his/her right-hand man willing to sell his soul at the bidding of his boss.

He was so powerful that one order, verbal or faxed to any official, from the lowly to the highest, had to be obeyed with ‘immediate effect.’ Much wrong was committed during the civilian rule. The short-lived governments got dismissed on corruption charges that carried lengthy lists of how the prime minister secretariat captained by the principal secretary broke all the rules in the book.

“Don’t use the word bureaucrat,” I am gently ticked off when I tell an American analyst wanting to know more about the civil service of Pakistan. Seeing my surprised reaction, he explains, “actually in America this word is used in a derogatory sense.” According to the British historian Charles Kingsley, “A bureaucrat is an official of a bureau; especially an official confirmed in a narrow and arbitrary routine.”

The punch line being “narrow and arbitrary.” This is the mindset of most bureaucrats who make an interesting case study in status-crazed arrogance and self-importance.

Therefore to understand where the principal secretary is coming from, we need to re-tread the rise and fall of the civil service of Pakistan (CSP). As we all know, after Partition, the ICS or the Indian Civil Service converted into the CSP.

Some years back, after Musharraf had packed off Nawaz Sharif’s government in 1999, the decline of the CSP was writ all across Pakistan. Those were the years when the public wrote angry letters to the editors in newspapers complaining about the haughtiness, corruption and politicisation of the service.

Not ones to sit back and take the beating lying down, some vocal retired CSPs defended their service by heaping all the blame on “the all-out assault” on CSP unleashed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Under the administrative reforms of 1973, all the services and cadres were merged into a single unified graded structure with equality of opportunity for all who enter the service at any stage based on the required professional and specialised competence necessary for each job.

The civil service of Pakistan was disbanded. In its place was born the new name of District Management Group. “This assault led directly to the loss of confidence,” says a retired CSP resulting in overall deficient administration by the deputy commissioner of a district. Bhutto brought all of them under one roof and sent them together for training at the Civil Services Academy in Lahore. Wrong move, cried out the defunct CSPs, but none heard their cries for help until they went dead.

Some DMG officers dubbed as ‘piplias’ because they were handpicked by the Bhutto government assisted in ‘rigging’ the 1977 elections to ensure Bhutto’s victory. It had a blowback effect that set the stage for countrywide agitation (the PNA Movement) resulting in the removal of ZAB.

According to a former CSP who was sitting with Bhutto when the state-owned PTV was calling out the 1977 election results, declaring all the PPP biggies from the NWFP, Punjab and Sindh as victors sweeping the polls “unopposed”, the prime minister’s face turned sickly pale. He knew his ‘loyal’ cadre of ex-CSPs had unwittingly vanquished him by getting their minions to stuff the ballot boxes. “Mr Bhutto lost his cool and was furious with the chief secretaries of these provinces for their ‘over kill’,” remembers the CSP. And he paid for it with a hangman’s noose round his neck.

The DMG officers were considered a great catch for parents with eligible daughters. They could pick and choose any bride they wished – the wealthier the better was the motto. A former CSP once told me, with a twinkle in his eye, that a few of his colleagues who married “rich lived to rue the day as their better-off wives had a domineering attitude. On the flip side, some of my friends, who disdained marrying into money preferred staying single rather than have a bossy wife. They realised their meagre salaries could not maintain a wife, especially a spoilt one!

“Of course in Ayub Khan’s era, many CSPs were black sheep but then President Ayub himself was not above board in his public and personal dealings.”

While some civil servants lived beyond their means and were noticed for it, there were others who got the rough end of the stick for being ‘political orphans.’ According to someone in the know “The then deputy commissioner (DC) Jhang was slapped by the police during Nawab Kalabagh’s days as the superintendent police (SP) Jhang was Governor Kalabagh’s appointee and the poor DC was not on the inside track. This happened at Trimmu headworks while the DC was going to spend a social evening with the irrigation boss.”

Another unfortunate official, a 50-plus joint secretary who was responsible for making the budget got bashed up by an MNA, 20 years his junior, from the ruling party in Musharraf’s era. The guy had to go to the hospital to be patched up. The matter was hushed up and the officer left licking his wounds in some corner of the secretariat probably cursing his own luck for the spat. “Chaudhry Shujaat of the Pakistan Muslim League is too powerful a man for any bureaucrat to lock horns with” said the officer’s colleagues.

The rise and fall of the civil service can fill volumes. There are so many stories to tell. Let me give the last word to a retired federal secretary who once told me: “More important than training are the role models we followed. My first three DCs were no good. The first one was very honest but would do anything to please his bosses. The second one was a political animal and would do more politics than the politicians.

‘The third one personally visited the site of a Bhutto public meeting (held after he had left Ayub Khan’s cabinet) and had it flooded before Bhutto’s arrival. He was accompanied by the commissioner. All the DCs I mention were mediocre men. We (the CSPs) thought we were superior, but we were not. Some among us may have been great, but then you can find such exceptional people among the proletariat too.”

The writer is a freelance journalist. Email: anjumniaz@rocketmail.com

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-New...s-dichotomised

__________________
"Nay! man is evidence against himself. Though he puts forth his excuses." Holy Qur'an (75:14-15)

Bureaucracy icon Anita Turab slapped with dismissal notice

Ansar Abbasi
Saturday, June 08, 2013

ISLAMABAD: In an unbelievable move, the civil bureaucracy’s iconic lady officer Anita Turab who, in the recent years, had put up an unprecedented fight to protect the government servants from humiliation at the hands of rulers and politicians, has been issued a show cause notice for dismissal from service for seeking the Election Commission’s intervention against shady appointments by the last PPP regime during its last days.

The officer, whose fight for the depoliticisation of the bureaucracy had led to the Supreme Court’s 2012 landmark judgment in the Anita Turab case, is facing the major penalty of dismissal from service for her letter that she wrote in her private capacity to the chief election commissioner early this year, which resulted into a ban on all appointments by the PPP government.

Anita, instead of being rewarded for her remarkable contribution to get the bureaucracy protected from being unfairly dealt by the rulers and politicians at the cost of her own career, is being removed from the service. She is under suspension for the last five months. Initially, she was suspended by the Pervez Ashraf government, but later the caretaker government extended her suspension twice.

While the corrupt and those who follow the illegal dictates of their senior and rulers are enjoying good positions in the bureaucracy, this lady has been issued the show cause notice for dismissal from service despite the fact that her inquiry officer had merely recommended a minor penalty for her.

The crime of the lady is that she being a concerned citizen of Pakistan wrote a letter to the CEC to prevent political appointments in the government departments during the dying days of the PPP regime. She neither used her official position nor mentioned it but wrote the letter as an ordinary citizen.

She became the target of the government as her letter got published in The News and subsequently it ended up in halting the controversial appointments. There has been no evidence of how the letter reached The News, but the lady had been subjected to victimisation by the PPP government and the caretakers on the grounds as to why did she not file a legal suit against the newspaper for publishing her private letter to the CEC.

On flimsy grounds and without any concrete evidence, her inquiry officer Owais Nauman Kundi concluded: “The accused officer Mrs Anita Turab has made slight or modest invasion into the working of the government organs: may be in good faith/reformatory activism for rectification of the alleged faux pas of the government, but such fiat of hers is not in line with the reasonable restrictions imposed upon her (as government servant). In the context of non-probative evidence, the mitigating circumstances of the derelictions or incitement, and the rule of proportionality, she does not attract harsh treatment for her un-reasonable act of doing more than what is required.”

But against the recommendation of minor penalty by the inquiry officer, the authorised officer Iftikhar Ahmad Rao imposed penalty on her by issuing her the show cause for dismissal from service. The show cause notice does not bear any date but merely states “May 2013” and gives her 14 days to respond as why the major penalty of dismissal from government service should not be imposed upon her.

Sources in the Establishment Division confided to The News that in her response Anita approached the Secretary Establishment with the contention that she had responded to her show cause notice but found that the authorised officer was not serving in the Economic Affairs Division where he claimed to be serving.

Anita Turab, who has been standing for the government servants who were mistreated by the rulers and politicians, initially became the target of the previous rulers and senior members of the bureaucracy when in 2011, she approached the chief justice of Pakistan for a suo moto notice against Wahida Shah for slapping a government official.

The News

Civil service reforms

THIS refers to the letter ‘Some suggestions’ by Dr Amer Jamil wherein the writer has presented a revolutionary idea that the qualification criteria for appearing in CSS examinations must be changed.

It is as much ironic as it is pathetic that anyone with a bachelor’s degree can join the Civil Services of Pakistan by taking CSS examinations while those who are highly qualified and are holding higher professional degrees are denied the opportunity under the pretext of age limit.

The requirement of only a bachelor’s degree for the CSS examinations is, in fact, stopping students from acquiring further education in our country where the literacy rate is already low.

The Federal Public Service Commission has admitted in its annual report that it has failed in attracting the cream, the top students from the universities most of whom opt for going abroad in search of better options.

A few years ago the FPSC’s research director, after a thorough academic research, had announced the intention of the commission to enhance the qualification criterion for CSS examinations from bachelors to at least 16 years of education with five years as general age relaxation.

He announced the good news while addressing a gathering in Faisalabad University. I don’t know who silenced him afterwards. It is time we modernised the civil service.

The federal ombudsman should inquire into the matter and increase the qualification criteria so that better and more competent candidates may join the bureaucratic setup of their country.

Dawn

Bureaucrats or courtiers?

UNTIL some years ago, one reason for joining government service rather than the more paying private sector was that young men wanted the self-respect and security that a government job gave them, rather than being under a seth in the private sector.

But now a government job has come to resemble one under a seth. A reminder of this are headlines that read: ‘Bureaucrats lobby Sharifs for plum jobs: reception tent at Raiwind packed with supplicants’.

From the days of ‘brown sahibs’ we have come full circle to the era of darbaris (courtiers). A certain number of darbari civil servants always existed, but now such conditions have been created that the number has swollen to a level where you need a tent to accommodate them.

The secretary/inspector general of police was the bastion of power and that is where the buck stopped for the provincial bureaucracy, the establishment secretary and secretary of the ministry for the federal bureaucracy.

The chief secretary was supposed to interact with the chief minister and the establishment secretary with the prime minister; they were to ensure not only that the best men were posted to the right jobs but that an officer’s honour and reputation was protected when he took decisions on merit and in good faith.

This gave the bureaucracy confidence and respect due to which the public accepted their authority. This is what is needed now.

In fact, the government’s writ was on account of the respect and awe that the bureaucracy inspired. When that writ was challenged, it was firmly dealt with, without fear. Decisions taken by the officers were normally not reversed and the officer was confident that his boss would stand by him. In case the officer needed to be rebuked or disciplined, this was done privately so as not to lower his image in the eyes of the public.

I remember that as commissioner in Faisalabad division, in one of many anti-encroachment operations we had demolished 103 car showrooms, three-storey high, in Faisalabad city. These had been built illegally and had remained on government land since the last 40 years. It was a dawn-to-dusk operation, using bulldozers and cranes.

In another operation, 600 or so shops were demolished on Jhang road, actions which opened the city’s clogged arteries. I informed the chief secretary a night before the operation. There was no fear of the 103 well-connected, rich owners of those car showrooms or the 600 shopkeepers, or the courts; what was being done was in the public interest. I came to no harm.

Unfortunately, that kind of confidence is not available to officers currently — for no fault of theirs. They have not been provided the environment, from the very start of their careers, to develop along the right lines.

On leaving their training institution, the young, bright, idealistic young men and women are thrown to the elected representatives to find their patrons and godfathers.

The senior officers, rather than taking them under their wing and guiding and protecting them, are unfortunately looking for their own patrons and godfathers. So officers at all levels head towards the ‘tents’ of the ministers, chief ministers and the prime minister rather than the waiting room of the chief secretary or their bosses. And you cannot blame them.

A silver lining to this dismal and deteriorating state of affairs has been the recent order of the Supreme Court in the Anita Turab case that justiciable reasons will have to be recorded by the government before transferring any officer prematurely.

While a brave officer put her career on the block by going to court against the government, one hopes the courts will have their ruling implemented without fear or favour.

This matter of prime ministers and chief ministers surrounding themselves with the best and most loyal officers, and leaving the rest of the bureaucracy in the lurch is neither good for bureaucracy nor for the rulers. The latter can only deliver if the bureaucracy delivers and establishes the writ of the state in all sectors.

The office of the establishment secretary and the chief secretary should be restored to its old powers, and we should strive to have bureaucrats as servants of the state and not the servants of political parties.

The maturity being shown in politics, in recognising each other’s mandate, should also trickle down to the bureaucracy. All officers who held decent posts under previous governments need not be placed on the list of suspects by the new government, unless they are known to flaunt their loyalties.

There is also another counterproductive management style that has developed; this is governance that stems solely from the ruler’s priorities. This results in the officers attending only to the numerous, unending priorities of the ruler, leaving them with no time to attend to the public’s routine problems.

Because the official is under constant pressure exerted by the ruler to meet deadlines, he has no time for the ordinary public. This causes misery to the public. Everyday affairs that do not fit in with ‘breaking-news’ type of issues comprise 90pc of governance issues in a well-functioning government. Just being available to the public itself is a relief as against being always at the beck and call of the ruler’s office.

As we celebrate the continuity of the democratic process, let us also be conscious that there is a need to wind up the tents full of supplicating government servants and restore their honour and self-respect in the interest of the elusive dream of good governance.

The writer is former secretary commerce.

DAWN

‘Bureaucrats or courtiers?’

THIS is apropos of Tasneem Noorani’s article ‘Bureaucrats or courtiers?’ (June 2). It reminds me of a few lines of an article in this paper by senior bureaucrat Tasneem Ahmed more than a decade ago. He narrated the reasons of the fall of bureaucracy. He wrote that the “fall of bureaucracy started when secretary-level officers started opening doors of cars of politicians.”

I agree with Mr Noorani that we should strive to have bureaucrats as servants of states and not servants of political parties.

In my opinion, the enormous challenges which the country is facing now and are under discussion at various forums could only be resolved by placing par excellent governance system at all levels which could only be done by saying goodbye to favouritism, ending the role of politicians in transfers and postings, relocation of bureaucrats should be purely on merit through a system of bureaucracy and, above all, banning bureaucrats from visiting houses of politicians.

M. IQBAL M.
Hyderabad

Dawn

A ‘civil’ strife
Tuesday, June 11, 2013

In recent years Anita Turab, a career civil servant, has fought to protect civil servants from the wiles and predations of politicians of all parties and the government of the day in particular. She has struggled for the depoliticisation of the bureaucracy. The Supreme Court gave a landmark ruling in 2012 in her favour, directing that the government cease and desist forthwith the practice of inserting political placemen in the bureaucracy. Turab has been the target of assorted vested interests ever since. Suspended for five months, originally by the Raja Pervaiz Ashraf government, her suspension was extended by the provisional government and she has now been told that she is issued with a show-cause notice for dismissal from the civil service – this being entirely contrary to the findings of the investigating body of her case which found that... ‘she does not attract harsh treatment for her unreasonable act of doing more than what is required’. In other words: a rap on the knuckles for being out of line, but nothing more than that. Dismissal not the recommended option.

The ‘crime’ that Turab has been found guilty of is that she acted in a private capacity as a concerned citizen and wrote to the chief election commissioner protesting at political appointments in government departments in the waning days of the PPP regime – appointments made with the clear intention of somewhat influencing the elections. In writing privately she did not use her official title nor sought to exploit her position – she made the separation between her post and the people’s right to know. But she aroused the ire of any number of powerful people who would have her silenced. That the SC subsequently ruled in her favour rubbed salt in the wounded egos of those whose bubbles she had pricked, and now they seek their revenge – and preferably her head on a plate. Anita Turab is a woman of whom this country should be proud. We rightly called her a one-woman squad. She stood against corruption and bad practice. She deserves the support of all those who seek to make this country a better place, while those who seek to consign her to oblivion deserve little more than our collective contempt and resistance.

The News