LAHORE: A high-powered committee of the federal government has assigned a crucial task to Sindh Inspector General of Police Syed Kaleem Imam and Establishment Division Secretary Ijaz Munir to prepare concept papers to give a final shape to the recently-introduced amendments to the Rotation Policy 2018 for the officers of the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) and the Police Service of Pakistan (PSP).

The federal government has taken “ultimate decision” to materialise the policy in a bid to strengthen the federation and help small provinces by providing them with services of highly-trained/experienced human resource.

For this purpose, a high-level meeting was chaired by adviser to the Prime Minister for Establishment Division Shahzad Arbab in Islamabad some days back.

The meeting was attended by IGPs and chief secretaries of all the four provinces besides many other top-ranked senior officers.

The heads of the police from the provinces included Sindh IGP Syed Kaleem Imam, Punjab IGP Amjad Javed Saleemi, Balochistan IGP Mohsin Hassan Butt and Khyber Pakhtunkhawa IGP Salahuddin Khan. Special Secretary of Establishment Division Imran Ahmad, Additional Secretary Nasim Nawaz, Joint Secretary Gulzar Hussain Shah also attended the meeting besides chief secretaries from the four provinces.

The sole agenda of the meeting was “To Review the Rotation Policy 2018 for the PAS and PSP Officers”.

The meeting particularly discussed the transfer of the police officers who had served more than 10 years in a province.

The meeting brought under discussion for the first time many other important and salient features of the rotation policy.

According to meeting minutes, the meeting discussed that the Balochistan-domiciled PAS/PSP officers complain about the province’s specific provisions of the Rotation Policy on the ground that it tends to provincialise them despite being members of the All Pakistan Service.

“There is a tendency among officers to stay in their provinces of domicile for an extended period after serving in provinces of first allocation”, say minutes of the meeting.

It also discussed that the officers resist rotation and to address this issue the Establishment Division introduced recent amendments to the rotation policy to transfer officers who have spent more than 10 years in one province.

“The PASs and PSPs are all Pakistan services and members of these services should serve in hard areas as well, across the country being federal services”, according to meeting minutes.

The meeting declared that the rotation policy should be implemented across the board without any discrimination but at least three months’ time may be given to the provinces or federal government, as the case may be, prior to making transfers/postings enabling the provinces to arrange their substitutes etc.

The officers may be allowed to retain at least one government accommodation anywhere in the country for settling their families.

The meeting further pointed out that one-room family suit accommodation be made readily available to the officers transferred to other provinces/federal government.

“The PAS/PSP officers are disinclined to move to Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan because they are usually not relieved by these governments after expiry of their prescribed period of two years”, the meeting regretted.

The vacancy position of the PAS/PSP officers may be taken into consideration before transfers/postings under the Rotation Policy 2018 are made.

It further declared that due care may be exercised before pulling out officers from the provinces/areas where there is already acute shortage of officers from the federal services.

It also took another important decision stating that FATA may be declared as a hard area and the incentive package should be given to the officers who are posted in FATA on the analogy of the governments of Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.

The recruitment/intake of officers may be increased and period of first allocation may be increased from five to seven years, say the minutes of the meeting.

Another key point also came under discussion to extend the scope of Rotation Policy from male to the female officers.

The policy should be linked with career planning and promotions and the female officers may also be brought under the ambit of the policy, say the documents.

“Having thoroughly discussed all aspects of the Establishment Division’s existing Rotation Policy and taking into consideration suggestions put forth by the participants, it was unanimously decided to develop a comprehensive framework wherein the policy is linked with overall career planning.”.

For finalizing the framework, the meeting assigned task to Sindh IGP Syed Kaleem Imam to prepare concept papers of Rotation Policy for PSP officers in consultation with all the police organizations and stakeholders.

Similarly, Establishment Division Secretary Ijaz Munir was asked to prepare concept papers of Rotation Policy for the PAS officers.

The concept papers should base upon all the points discussed in the meeting, concluded the session.

Published in Dawn, November 15th, 2018