KARACHI: Top Sindh Bureaucrat sounds note of alarm : Govt recruitment
By Habib Khan Ghori
KARACHI, Nov 16: The chief secretary of Sindh, Ejaz Ahmed Qureshi, has asked all governments and district coordination officers to refrain from appointing any new people to provincial government posts in the few days remaining in order to avoid causing the government embarrassment.
The directive applies even to cases where selections were made during the past three years but the persons could not be accommodated due to a ban or other reasons. Making such appointments falls within the purview of the violation of the rules prescribed in this regard, Dawn has learnt.
According to informed sources, the chief secretary wrote a letter to secretaries in which he referred to summaries moved by various departments asking for the relaxation of the ban on appointments. This letter, and others sent to various government functionaries, resulted in the spread of a rumour regarding the transfer of the chief secretary and the handing over of charge to the additional chief secretary (planning), Ghulam Sarwar Khero.
While Mr Qureshi and Mr Khero were not available for comment, it was nevertheless confirmed that until Friday (Nov 16), no notification regarding such a transfer was issued.
The chief secretary conducted business as usual at the New Sindh Secretariat. He also attended a meeting on law and order.
The rumour, reported in some sections of the press and on television, spread on Thursday in wake of Mr Qureshi’s absence from the city. The chief secretary was in Islamabad that day and returned at night.
Informed sources told Dawn that the rumour was circulated by certain elements with vested interests, who considered Mr Qureshi a hurdle in attaining their objectives. They said that the chief secretary had refused to be influenced by any pressure in terms of following the principles of merit and the rules and regulations in terms of new appointments.
‘Clear instructions issued’
In his letter to the chief minister, Mr Qureshi reportedly said that in the past few days, a number of departments had moved summaries asking for the relaxation of the chief minister’s ban on appointments. Since the vacancies numbered in the thousands and were increasing, little time was given for proper examination by the services department.
The chief secretary said that he had issued clear instructions to administrative departments that the prescribed rules of appointment be followed in full, including wide publicity of available posts through advertisements, a credible and transparent selection process to ensure merit-based selection and the finalisation of the appointments by a competent forum. The letter said that these instructions had been issued to all secretaries and DCOs in the wake of certain complaints regarding deviations from the guidelines of a fair and transparent process of selection.
Mr Qureshi said that in some of the summaries, he had noted that certain selections had been made between one and three years ago, while in other cases, thousands of jobs were filled within days, based on a prior selection process. This, he said, would seriously damage the credibility and transparency of the entire exercise, cause huge embarrassment to the government and could also lead to litigation and audit objection scrutiny by the National Accountability Bureau and the next assembly. Therefore, wrote the chief secretary, it would be in the best public interests, as well as beneficial for the government – which was going into the election mode – to avoid any such deviation from the established rules.
It is worth noting that Mr Qureshi took charge as the chief secretary on July 12. His predecessor, Shakil Durrani, was transferred after only four months at the post. The transfer was attributed to his practice of observing the rules strictly, as a result of which many summaries that were sent to him for approval either piled up, or were returned with the directive that the relevant regulations must be adhered to.
