ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat will take up next week the issue of alleged discrimination in the promotion of senior government officers by the Central Selection Board (CSB), Dawn has learnt.

The committee headed by Senator Talha Mehmood of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F (JUI-F) will take up the matter which was raised by the opposition PPP and the MQM during the recently-held sessions of the National Assembly and the Senate.

In the Senate, the issue was raised by PPP’s parliamentary leader Saeed Ghani while speaking on matters of public importance on May 12.

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The Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly, Syed Khurshid Ahmed Shah, had already written a letter to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, urging him to review the promotion of officers in BPS 19, 20 and 21 made at the CSB’s meeting earlier this month.

Mr Shah had alleged that the board had discriminated against officers belonging to the smaller provinces, particularly Sindh and Balochistan, and promoted junior officers from Punjab.

The PPP alleges that the CSB, while promoting 13 officers from BPS 21 to BPS 22, ignored officers from Sindh and Balochistan, with none of the officers from the two provinces being promoted BPS 22.

“It is also further pointed out that out of 40 federal secretaries only one belongs to Sindh province. Three junior PAS officers are working as additional secretaries in charge, whereas some officers of Sindh who are senior to the three officers were never considered to meet the shortfall, leaving Sindh highly under-represented at the highest level in the federal government,” Mr Shah had written in his letter.

“In the last meeting of CSB-1 held on 3rd and 4th May, 2015, eight officers of PAS Group from Sindh were superseded or deferred/ignored despite the fact that they were meeting the required criteria,” Mr Shah said, adding that “in case of promotion of officers from BS 19 to 20, a number of officers from Sindh, despite meeting the criteria, stand ignored/superseded.”

Mr Shah also raised the matter on the floor of the National Assembly in the presence of Prime Minister Sharif on Tuesday.

Giving a policy statement on the issue, Mr Sharif had declared that promotion of civil servants was based on “merit, transparency and qualifications and not on provincial preferences”. He claimed that his government had no role in the promotion of civil servants.

The prime minister assured the opposition leader that he would personally review the matter. He said that corrective measures would be taken in case wrongdoing was proved.

Speaking in the Senate, Mr Ghani had regretted that Senator Fateh Muhammad Hasni, who was a member of the CSB, was removed from the board through a notification just a day before the meeting.

He claimed that a “credible officer” from Sindh had been denied promotion despite having more marks than required just because he happened to be the son-in-law of Sindh chief minister.

Mr Ghani said the sense of deprivation among the smaller provinces increased whenever the PML-N came into power.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2015

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