KARACHI: Service commissions at district level likely
KARACHI, Nov 28: The Sindh government is considering establishing district service commissions and district service tribunals in the province besides promulgating an ordinance, granting the SPSC with additional powers.
The new ordinance will repeal the existing SPSC Act of 1989. The SPSC will undertake all recruitments to grades from BPS-11 and above. Although an ordinance is yet to be promulgated, the commission is already undertaking recruitment in these grades.
However, there is a possibility of setting up of district service commissions and district service tribunals to oversee recruitment and discipline. From the next fiscal year, the district governments will prepare budgets that will include also the wages and salaries. At that point, recruitment and discipline for district cadres will be the responsibility of the district governments, sources in the Sindh government said. They, however, categorically stated that a pay policy would not be devolved to the district governments or other lower tiers.
The staff from the provincial government have been absorbed in the district governments. They are now based in the district government, but for the time being continue to draw their salary from the provincial government. It is envisaged that staff at Basic Pay Scale-15 and below will eventually be transferred to newly-created district cadres. A discussion also continues on extending district cadre to BPS-16, covering all non-gazetted staff grades, sources said, adding that tehsil councils (councils set up at sub-division level) will be staffed with a combination of provincial, district and tehsil cadres and union councils will be staffed with provincial and union cadres.
In the meantime, the Services & General administration Department has started an initial count of civil servants as there is no central human resource management database on number of staff actually employed. A full census of all civil servants is to be completed by March 2003.
The sanctioned employment in the provincial government, excluding provincial public corporations, grew dramatically in the early 1990s from 2,85,042 in 1988/89 to some 4,24,974 in 1993/94 and has levelled off around 4,50,000.
The AG maintains payroll record but given uncertainties in the establishment list, there is no obvious way to verify its accuracy, sources said.
Although the actual staff strength might have reduced slightly because of the recruitment freeze on staff below BPS-14, but this cannot be confirmed.
The recent right-sizing exercises has also not led to any significant reduction. These exercises were undertaken in three departments created by merger of previous smaller departments.
Right-sizing will cover another 12 departments but initially it will be carried out in six departments. Through right-sizing in merged departments, 831 staff were rendered surplus and moved to surplus pool for redeployment. Of these, 461 came from Sindh Small Industries Corporation, Directorate of Industries and Government Printing Press, 310 from Social Welfare Department and remainder from Irrigation and Power department. The total in the pool has now been reduced to 380 after redeployment.—PPI
