KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah lashed out at the provincial bureaucracy on Wednesday for illegal appointments, non-utilisation of development funds and not attending offices on time, etc.

He directed all administrative secretaries to submit a detailed list of all vacant posts in their respective departments within three days and warned them they action would be taken against them if they failed to meet the deadline.

Mr Shah was chairing a meeting of all the administrative secretaries at the Sindh secretariat.

He made it clear that all appointments, if any, made during the ban period would be treated as illegal and unauthorised.

Informed sources told Dawn that the chief minister said that certain secretaries used their influence (sifarish) to get lucrative postings but he considered such officers as incompetent.

He also took them to task for not attending their offices on time. He said he had paid surprise visits on different occasions, but found almost every secretary absent.

The sources said that the education secretary informed the meeting about some appointments from grade 1 to 15 in certain districts, which he said were illegal. He proposed that such appointments should be made through the Sindh Public Service Commission to ensure transparency and merit.

The CM said that as soon as he took the office after the May 11, 2013 general election, he imposed a ban on employment.

He said that no officer would be allowed to ignore or violate the ban and whosoever found responsible would be taken to task.

He directed the secretaries to not take the government’s policies lightly and to comply with them in letter and spirit.

The sources said that the services secretary informed the CM that around 400 lower grade officers had been promoted while promotion of grade 18 and 19 officers was required in order to end the OPS (own pay scale) practice. The CM directed the provincial secretaries to ensure the promotions of the officers in their departments through the regular department promotion committees on merit.

The services secretary also informed the meeting that around 500 graft cases against different officers were pending before the anti-corruption establishment.

Acting Sindh police chief Ghulam Hyder Jamali also attended the meeting.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2014