ISLAMABAD: A Senate committee said on Monday that the process adopted by the Central Selection Board (CSB) last month for promotion of senior government officials was “not transparent”.

Members of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat were of the opinion that several honest and deserving officers had been denied promotion. They asked the secretary of the establishment division to inform them in the next meeting about reasons for awarding and denying promotion to each official.

The chairman of the committee, Talha Mehmood of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Fazl), said the Central Selection Board had considered the cases of a large number of officials in a very short time which was an “injustice.”

He said cases of about 700 officials were reviewed by the CSB and the 25-year performance of each official was assessed on an average in only two minutes and 50 seconds.

‘Several honest and deserving officers have been denied promotion’

The members expressed concern over the fact that a retired grade-21 official was heading the board.

They alleged that the Central Selection Board had promoted some officials facing charges of corruption in courts and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). The committee chairman alleged that some of the recently-promoted officials had even paid money to NAB in plea bargains.

Establishment Secretary Nadeem Asif Hassan told the committee that the board would review the cases of officials who did not get promotion last month in its next meeting expected in September or October.

He rejected the allegation that decisions about promotions had been made before the board meeting.

The matter had been referred to the committee by Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani when PPP’s Saeed Ghani and Tahir Mashhadi of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement drew attention of the house to what they claimed discrimination against smaller provinces in the matter.

Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Khursheed Ahmed Shah had also written a letter to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and urged him to review the promotions of officials in BPS-19, 20 and 21 grades.

Mr Shah alleged that the officials belonging to smaller provinces, particularly Sindh and Balochistan, had suffered injustice in the matter of promotion while junior officials from Punjab had been given preference at their cost.

While promoting 13 officials from BS-21 to BS-22, the board had ignored officials from Sindh and Balochistan because not a single official from the two provinces was promoted to BS-22, he said.

Mr Shah had also raised the issue on the floor of the National Assembly in the presence of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

In a policy statement, Mr Sharif had said the promotions were given on merit and in transparent manner. According to him, the decisions were taken on the basis of qualifications and not on provincial preferences. He had claimed that the government had no role in the promotion of civil servants.

Speaking in the Senate, PPP’s parliamentary leader Saeed Ghani had regretted that Senator Fateh Mohammad Mohammad Hasni, a member of the CSB, had been removed from the board only a day before the meeting.

The committee members took notice of removal of Mr Hasni from the CSB and sought a reply from the secretary in the next meeting.

MQM’s Tahir Mashhadi had told the Senate that at present only one federal secretary was from Sindh and none from Balochistan.

Published in Dawn, June 23rd, 2015

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