|
|
|
| March 31, 2007 | Saturday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 11, 1428 |
Service structure loopholes worry IT professionals
PESHAWAR, March 28: Information technology professionals working in various provincial government departments on Friday complained that the service structure designed for their cadre had various career-affecting lacunae.
Many IT professionals told this correspondent that the government had declared the Establishment Department to be their administrative department under new rules.
“This role should have been given to the information technology department because of its relevancy,” they said.
Under the current service structure, they complained, there were only two posts in BPS-18 and BPS-16 for promotion, which meant others would have to wait till their retirement for promotion.
The current service structure, according to them, was only for those IT professionals, who were working within the ambit of the civil secretariat, as there was no clarification for those currently posted in other directorates and district administrations.
“The service cadre should cover computer-related technical staff at provincial (secretariat and directorates) and district level posts, increasing the scope of vertical and horizontal reshuffling,” a senior IT professional said.There was a clear anomaly in pay-scales, for example, programmers, computer operators, key-punch operators, data entry operators and computer assistants, had been recruited against various basic pay-scales.
Previously, the post of computer operator used to be created in grade 10 but now it was being created in grade 11 while there was no change in the criterion of qualification.
“Now after merging seniority lists of both categories, computer operators in grade 10 with 10 to 16 years of service will become junior to those recruited in grade 11 even a month ago,” another official said.
The new service structure was also silent about the combined seniority list for IT professionals recruited by various departments.
According to them, recruitment was made by adopting different criteria, including qualification and experience, and some were without proper service rules. “This will create problems while devising a combined seniority list,” he said.
Similarly, the district level staff had no service rules. “There is a need to formulate uniform rules for job induction and integration in the proposed service structure.”
IT professionals voiced reservations over the existing promotion policy for such technical staffers, saying that anyone could be promoted as a programmer whether he was capable of programming or not.
They said that rules also allowed a person with a qualification of only matric to be promoted as a director, virtually blocking the technically-proficient staff’s prospects for promotion.
“To ensure elevation of suitable persons to highly-technical positions, the candidate for the post of a programmer (BPS-17) must hold at least a master’s degree in computer science,” they suggested.
|
|
|
|
