MUZAFFARABAD: The AJK government is being criticised for its ‘generosity’, after the region’s IGP, Bashir Ahmed Memon, declined a post-retirement package.

On March 28, the AJK Services and General Administration Department clandestinely issued a notification to supplement the facilities admissible to the chief secretaries under an earlier notification issued on June 15, 2006.

Through the June 15, 2006, notification, which was renewed on June 4, 2011, the chief secretaries were offered the services of a cook and a driver for lifetime after their retirement.

The March 28 notification not only added 800 free local phone calls, 800 units of electricity, 25 cubic hectometres gas and 200 litres petrol per month to the post-retirement benefits of the chief secretaries but it went on to declare the admissibility of the same benefits to the IGPs as well.

However, the response by IGP Memon to the notification was surprising for the government that faces an accumulative shortfall of Rs25bn between income and expenditures.

The chief secretaries and IGPs are among five officers posted in AJK by the central government, and are commonly referred to as ‘lent officers.’

“Prima facie, these privileges would amount to putting additional burden on the exchequer of the state,” maintained Mr Memon in a semi-official letter to Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider.

When contacted Mr Memon confirmed that he had asked the government to withdraw the notification in the wake of its poor fiscal health.

However, Finance Minister Dr Najeeb Naqi defended the move. “All other provinces, particularly Punjab, are offering these privileges to retired chief secretaries and IGPs and we have just replicated them,” he told Dawn.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2017