PESHAWAR: Officers belonging to the Provincial Planning Service (PPS) cadre have demanded the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to grant them planning allowance on the pattern of allowances it has allowed to doctors, engineers and civil servants.

Officials told Dawn that in this regard PPS officers had twice approached the provincial government. An office-bearer of the PPS Association said that both the previous and present governments had allowed scheduled posts allowance for officers of provincial and federal bureaucracy and police officers posted in the province, technical allowance to the engineers and health professional allowance for doctors.

He said that in November last a summary in this regard had been moved to the chief minister, which was later referred to the finance department. The official said that for the past several months, the finance department was sitting on the summary while at the same time the department was giving the privilege to other cadres.

He said that on December 31, they again asked the provincial government to consider their case. He said that while the bureaucracy framed and executed government policy, they were responsible for planning government projects and both cadres should be treated in the same manner.

He said the planning cadre had a strength of 141 personnel and about 50 posts of this were lying vacant and planning allowance to entire cadre amounts to a paltry Rs95 million per annum.

He said it was ironic that planning cadre’s officials were working in offices next to their counterparts in the provincial and federal bureaucracy; however, getting only half as compared to them. “A BS-17 PMS officer earns about Rs45,000 more as compared to an official of planning cadre,” he said.

A PPS letter addressed to the chief minister noted that KP was the first province to constitute a separate cadre for the planning officers. It said that PPS officers were working at provincial and district government levels and looking after provincial and district annual development programmes.

It demanded of the chief minister to give them planning allowance at the rate of 1.5 per cent of the basic pay.

Published in Dawn, January 11th, 2019