December 03, 2008	Wednesday	Zilhaj 4, 1429

KARACHI, Dec 2: The city government has promoted more than 50 employees of fire department to higher grades in what is seen as a serious violation of the defined rules, causing serious resentment among senior staffers and has forced them to move court against the fresh promotions.

Referring to the fresh notification issued by the municipal services department, government officials said that nearly 60 people had been promoted though most of them did not enjoy the cadre in which their basic pay scale had been upgraded.

“In a few cases a couple of firemen have been promoted to fire station officer,” said a source privy to the recent developments.

“As per defined rules for promotions a fireman can only be promoted to a leading fireman and a leading fireman deserves elevation to the position of a sub-fire-officer. But in fresh promotion orders, the staffers in BPS-5 and BPS-10 have been directly promoted to BPS-16.”

He said the fresh move from the municipal services would not only discourage the experienced employees but would also affect the overall performance of the department, as the promoted employees had been awarded serious responsibility despite the fact that most of them were fresh.

“Apparently there is no consideration of merit in these promotions but we suspect that most of the employees promoted in the last few days are either relatives of the officers at the helm of affairs or have used influential connections for such benefits,” alleged a senior employee of the department, who was denied promotion in the latest move.

The sources cited promotions of some half a dozen employees, including ambulance attendants and drivers in BPS-7 who had been promoted to BPS-10. “Fire fighting is purely a professional job and can’t be awarded to non-technical persons,” said the sources. “There are about 800 employees in the department who perform different jobs but not everyone is a fire fighter. However, in case of these promotions some non-technical persons, who have not gone through any training neither have experienced a single fire fighting operation, have been awarded highly sensitive jobs.”

Many fire department employees have decided to take up the issue with different quarters and finally move the court to block execution of the municipal services department’s orders of promotions.

“In the first phase, we’ll meet political leadership of the city and request them to raise such issue in the City Council’s session,” said another employee of the department.