LAHORE: The Punjab government may offer substantive executive allowance to all Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) and Provincial Management Service (PMS) officers apparently to retain them in the province.

The Punjab government has moved a summary to this effect to Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on the pretext that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has early this month offered executive allowance to its PAS, PCS and PMS officers.

The allowance will be offered to the officers working against scheduled posts of Establishment and Administration Department to the tune of 1.5 initial basic pay per month as per pay scale 2017.

On similar KP government lines, the Punjab government has calculated that each PAS/PCS/PMS officer in BS-21 may be offered Rs115,080 per month, while those serving in BS-20, BS-19, BS-18 and BS-17 may be offered Rs103,635, Rs88,815, Rs57,525 and Rs45,550 per month, respectively.

The Punjab government top officials say the summary has been moved to offer incentives to officers to ensure their retention in Punjab. Otherwise, they believe, the quality human resource in Punjab will look to go to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – to bag financial incentives. However, a top official concerned parried a question that why the government wanted to give huge financial incentives to all officers without determining the “quality” in human resources available in Punjab.

It is learnt that there are some 267 PAS as well as 44 federal service officers serving on deputation in Punjab. And there are some 1,200 PCS/PMS officers serving in the province. The cost of offering executive allowance may run in multi-millions per month.

It may be mentioned that the Punjab government had early last year granted a hefty superior executive allowance to the chief secretary and the inspector general of police to the tune of Rs400,000 and Rs375,000, respectively, that had drawn a sharp criticism and a heated debate in the bureaucracy.

Sources say the government always wanted to compensate the PAS/PCS/PMS officers and the KP government’s move just supported the Punjab bureaucracy to go ahead.

In the meantime, the teachers community has also become active and spreading a notification of Sindh government’s Universities and Boards Department that notified on Thursday enhancing the rate of PhD monthly allowance from Rs10,000 to Rs25,000 to all PhD faculty members of public sector universities with immediate effect.

With reference to the grant of executive allowance to PAS/PCS/PMS officers, the Punjab government is copying KP government’s conditions that the allowance will be admissible to the officers working against scheduled posts alone. The officers of other cadres working against scheduled posts are not entitled to this allowance.

The officers in question, who are in receipt of such allowances other than regular allowances, shall be entitled to one of the allowances, whichever is more beneficial. The allowance will not be admissible to OSD posts and the officers, who are on leave reserve posts. The executive allowance should not be counted towards pension and gratuity.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2018