April 01, 2008	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 23, 1429

PESHAWAR, March 31: Officers from planning and treasury cadres are unhappy over the inclusion of their schedule posts in the recently created Provincial Management Service (PMS) because they believe it will ‘block’ their promotions.

A number of officers working in Planning and Development (P&D) and Finance departments told Dawn that the posts of executive district officer (finance and planning), chief of section and assistant chief had been enlisted as schedule posts of the newly created PMS paving the way for non-technical officer to serve and get promotions against those technical posts.

The NWFP government had recently created PMS by replacing the old Provincial Civil Service (PCS) as a step to restructure the provincial services, which was essential following the introduction of devolution of power plan in 2001. Under the newly created service, the executive and secretariat groups of the defunct PCS had been merged into one group.

The new service cadre had total 807 schedule posts including one of grade 22, eight of grade 21, 74 of grade 20, 75 of grade 19, 171 of grade 18 and 478 of grade 17. Apart from entry level positions of grade 17, all the posts will be filled by promotion among the inductees of PMS.

The list of these schedule posts also contains five posts of chief of section and 24 posts of EDO (finance and planning) in grade 19 and eight posts of assistant chief in planning and development having basic pay scale 18.

Officials, currently working against these posts were mostly inductees of P&D and Finance departments, said they had their own seniority list and after inclusion of those posts in PMS their chances of getting promotion to senior grades would be reduced greatly.

An official at P&D department explained that currently all the posts of chief of section and assistant chiefs were occupied by the officers of the same department, as whenever any vacancy at top fell vacant the senior most officer in turn got promotion. However, now with the inclusion of these posts in PMS, the officers from the newly created service can only be promoted, as the department’s own officers will have limited chances to make progress in career.

The P&D department had already raised the issue with the chief secretary and demanded remedial steps which might be possible in shape of constituting a separate service cadre for the officers hailing from the planning services, the official maintained.

The inclusion of 24 posts of EDO (finance and planning) in grade 19 had also irked a number of officers from the treasury group of the Finance department, an official said.

The officers, he explained, from the same group believed that since the posts of EDO were purely of technical nature and their inclusion into PMS schedule would not only pave the way for the officers from the general cadre, having no background knowledge of the technical job, to serve against those technical posts, but it would also limit possibilities of their promotions.