Returning salaries

E-Paper | July 25, 2026

THE Punjab chief secretary has reminded 54 government officers to return money paid to them in addition to what was deemed to be their fair and rightly earned salary. The reminder has come in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision some time ago, focusing on appointments made in various public-sector companies and perks given to the employees by the Shahbaz Sharif government. Interestingly enough, the overwhelming majority of those asked had agreed to pay back the ‘extra’ sum. The cumulative amount runs into hundreds of millions, with one officer alone ‘owing’ the Pakistani public more than Rs50m. There are other, similar cases that are part of the expanding accountability exercise, for example, the appointment of the famous poet and author Ataul Haq Qasmi who was appointed chairman of PTV by the last PML-N government. In this instance as well, the Supreme Court is seeking to recover the money ‘overspent’ on him as chairman, by fining a number of people blamed for his appointment, including the then information minister. Mr Qasmi has been asked to pay some of it as well.

This may be one of the evolving formulas of getting back the ‘riches’, but it will surely tax the minds of jurists looking for a just system to perform what has traditionally been considered an impossible task, ie recovering resources already spent. In the case of the Punjab officials, who are perceived as not having actually ‘earned’ what they were paid, it must be said that they are being penalised for the last government’s avowed desire of following market principles — pay good salaries and ask employees to be more responsible and efficient. Since it is going to be difficult to challenge this rule in a fast-changing world, it would be in everyone’s interest to have some kind of a policy in place at the federal and provincial levels in order to avoid more situations where the government has to knock on the doors of its own employees to reclaim salary slips.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2018

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Syed Ahmed Yahya

Nov 09, 2018 08:49am

Of late, CJ while addressing a seminar said that huge amount is spent on average judge each day and that is why they should improve their performance. These judges, besides other government employees are regular employees of the government and entitled to lucrative post-retirement benefits including life long pensions. Unlike them, contractual employees are paid in lumpsum with no guarantee of service continuity let alone any pension etc. That is why higher salaries are paid to such employees to attract them. So one wonders if the penalised employees were being paid even above market rates?

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Mehboob Ali Lalani

Nov 09, 2018 09:29am

This is extremely praiseworthy orders passed by that the Supreme Court recovering huge amount from the bigwigs favorites. Doling out fat salaries never bring effeciency. This can be seen from their performances. All departments are in moribund state. The government should benchmark salaries with percentile considering qualifications, experiences and job assignments. If the objectives are not met the amount paid be recovered.

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Shahidam

Nov 09, 2018 09:50am

'In the case of the Punjab officials, who are perceived as not having actually ‘earned’ what they were paid, it must be said that they are being penalised for the last government’s avowed desire of following market principles — pay good salaries and ask employees to be more responsible and efficient.' Few words worth paying attention to, for example: 'not earned', 'penalised', 'market principles', 'responsible and efficient'. FIrst, these are all relative terms. Second, Republic or private? Third, who determines degree of responsibility and efficiency? What are SOPs for assessing? Are those available somewhere? Were there benchmarks, deadlines, TOR, etc? Like beauty is in the eyes of beholder, were there eyes, ears, minds and wishes of 'beholder(s)' in those cases too? Story of the 'writer' made DG/chairman of PTV violating and bypassing all written rules does reveal a lot of 'selective' apples of someone's eyes. Did he 'earn' what he was paid? Time to step back and think carefully.

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Amjad Durrani Engineer USA

Nov 09, 2018 07:30pm

A good editorial but the question remains who will been this cat? A system built around cronyism & political bribery and outright corruption requires a Herculean effort to clean this rotten system. In today’s Pakistan all our problems emanate from lack of sense of ownership in performance of our jobs at any level of govt. institutions. Private sector has an edge for demanding productivity from their employees wherein non performing actors are fired without wait while public sector providing job security, even to fire a lowest rank worker has to face brunt of unionized labor, political pressure & threats to safety of incumbent. With overall protection provided to public sector employees, we see total lethargy, unproductive & inefficient performance in all tiers of civil bureaucracy.Unless an oversight body comprising of majority members from general public is not constituted & changes in the govt. E&D rules not brought about,these action will prove to be mere cosmetics in the long run

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Nawaz

Nov 10, 2018 10:28am

Generally, in order to keep the overpayment, the employee has to show three things: -Overpayment was the company’s fault. -Employee had reasonably assumed that they were not being overpaid. -As a result of overpayment they have suffered financial loss. In other words, money has now been spent. It would be very difficult to meet all three above criteria. If overpayments have now been spent by officials, the authorities should devise a formula to recover outstanding funds by setting up affordable instalments to be paid over a period of time rather than demanding the whole amount in full. However, funds invested in properties and stocks may be recovered in full.

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