PESHAWAR, Feb 26: The NWFP caretaker cabinet in its last meeting here on Tuesday declared all the employees of the public sector recruited between 2001 and 2005 eligible for pension facility.

The cabinet approved withdrawal of amendments made in Section-19 of the Civil Servant Act 1973 on July 23, 2005, which would benefit the employees recruited under contractual arrangement from June 2001 to June 2005.

Under the amendments, the government had deprived the employees recruited during the said period of the pension mainly to avoid future liabilities. This policy doesn’t exist anywhere in Pakistan except NWFP, which remained a cause of resentment among the civil servants in the past.

The caretaker government soon after assuming charge established a sub-committee headed by its finance minister Azam Khan for reviewing the amendments and removing civil servants’ grievances.

The committee recommended withdrawal of the amendments and proposed that the government employees in to be appointed in future would be given the option to choose between pension and Contributory Provident (CP) Fund. The committee observed that CP fund was more beneficial for employees than the pension but there was no awareness about that fact.

Sources privy to the meeting told Dawn that an ordinance for withdrawal of earlier made amendments in Civil Servant Act 1973 would be presented before the next provincial cabinet.

After the cabinet approval, a bill will be tabled in the provincial assembly to materialise the decision, they said.

The cabinet also decided the hiring of a professional consultant for fund management of all funds including pension, gratuity, GP Fund, Benevolent Fund and SHYDO Endowment Fund.

Caretaker Chief Minister Shamsul Mulk presided over the meeting, which took for debate a nine-point agenda and made certain decisions.

Chief Secretary Sahibzada Riaz Noor, Additional Chief Secretary Ghulam Dastagir and administrative secretaries attended the cabinet meeting.

The cabinet also reviewed report of another committee on restructuring of the revenue department and approved the hiring of a consultant to carry out a study for the purpose.The consultant will indicate a mechanism for land revenue, settlement, up-dating and easing out the problems of the stakeholders in the revenue related network.The cabinet preferred to leave the issue of revenue reforms to the next government, which will review the recommendations of the committee.

A five per cent resource distribution formula was approved for distribution of receipts incurred through royalty on natural resources among the districts where those resources were located.

The cabinet constituted a committee to be headed by chief secretary and additional chief secretary, SMBR and others as its members for devising a criterion for distribution of resources which would focus on the facilitation of affected persons, creating services in education, health and other infrastructure development.