KARACHI: Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to take urgent measures to ensure that the federal bureaucracy has proper representation of officers from Sindh in accordance with the Constitution.

The inadequate representation of officers from the smaller province stoked the sense of deprivation among its people, said the chief minister in a letter addressed to the prime minister.

The federal bureaucracy played a vital role in assisting the federal government in policy-making and implementation of approved polices, Mr Shah said, adding that the Constitution envisaged that the federal government would have adequate representation from all the provinces in the federal bureaucracy according to their population but there had always been inadequate representation from the smaller provinces.

The chief minister claimed that the Pakistan Peoples Party-led federal government had always taken such steps as lateral entry and induction from provincial services to bridge this gap. But, at present, there was hardly any representation of Sindh in the federal government which was “very disturbing and requires urgent steps and your personal attention”, he added.

He recommended to the prime minister that some urgent steps be taken to give required representation to Sindh at the level of federal secretaries and chief secretaries according to the population of the province. He suggested to the prime minister that special promotions be given to the officers working in BPS-21 and 22 from the province of Sindh to maintain the provincial ratio in these grades.

The chief minister said that the officers who had been cleared by the Central Selection Board for promotion to BPS-21 should not be discriminated against on the grounds that they had served on important positions in the Pakistan Peoples Party government. All the deserving officers should get promotions, he said, explaining that the recently held Central Selection Board promoted six officers (PAS) of Sindh from BPS-20 to BPS-21 but three officers were reverted to BPS-20 without assigning any cogent reason.

He expressed the hope that due consideration would be given to his suggestions and urgent steps would be taken to redress the genuine grievances of the people of Sindh province which would deepen their sense of deprivation in case they remained unattended.

35pc schools fund used, CM told

While presiding over a meeting on the performance of the education department at CM House on Monday, the chief minister expre­ss­ed his displeasure over 35 per cent utilisation of the development fund released so far to the educat­ion department and directed the off­i­cials concerned to ensure pro­per and timely utilisation of the fund.

The chief minister was informed by the department that the finance department had allocated Rs8,518.9 million in the current Annual Deve­lo­p­ment Programme (ADP) for completion of ongoing development sch­e­mes in six education department sectors. The fin­ance department released Rs2,079.9m in the first tra­nche out of which only Rs566.9 million was utilised, he was informed.

Explaining reasons of only 35 per cent utilisation of the released amount, education secretary Fazulullah Pechuho said: “The education department does not execute development work on its own but it is done by the works and services department.” He added that the finance department released the fund directly to the education department which transferred it to the works and services secretary who also released the fund onward to their engineers for payment to the contractors.

The six education department sectors in the ADP 2013-14 are elementary education (Rs670.7 million), teachers’ education (Rs60.6m), secondary education (Rs3,182.4m), college education (Rs2,169m), higher education (Rs1,475.1m) and other small schemes (Rs960.874m). The total allocation for the ongoing schemes comes to Rs8,518.9 million.

Senior Minister Nisar Khuhro giving a presentation about non-functional schools in the province said that out of total 5,000 closed schools inherited by the government about one and a half years ago, 2,900 schools were made operational.

The Karachi schools director said there were 2,986 schools in the city. Of them, as many as 433 schools had been closed until last year. However, the government made 423 schools functional, while only 10 schools were left to be made functional.

The Mirpurkhas schools director said there were 8,380 schools in Mirpurkhas division out of which 1,586 were closed. He said that 1,181 of the closed schools were made functional.

The Larkana division schools director said 418 out of total 9,159 schools in Larkana division were closed. Only 158 schools of them could be made operational, the official added.

The Sukkur schools director said 607 of the total 9,591 schools in the division were closed. The official said that 260 of the closed schools were made operational.

The figures of schools closed in Hyderabad and government efforts to make them functional could not be reviewed, as the respective schools director was not present at the meeting.

Published in Dawn, November 25th , 2014