FAISALABAD: Traffic wardens in Punjab are perturbed over the promotion criteria that “merely considers seniority/age and has no room for performance or what is technically called good or bad entries.”

Speaking to Dawn over the nagging issue of promotions, many wardens gave details of the service problems they were facing and said they had been serving the traffic department for more than a decade now and still their rank was sub-inspector which was sheer injustice. The criteria was introduced in 2017 before which there was no hard and fast rule for promotion, they said.

They said the officers of the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS), the Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) and those in other departments got promotions on a regular basis. However, they said, the government was ignoring the problems of the wardens especially their promotion matters.

“There is no role of performance and promotions are made on the basis of seniority. Such a flawed promotion system leads to aggression among the wardens,” said a warden.

Currently, they said, about 90 seats had been allocated for the promotion of wardens as senior wardens which means only 10 to 15pc of Faisalabad traffic wardens would get promotions. A promotion course had also been made mandatory for the traffic wardens, however, the selection criteria for this course was based on seniority and that had been made according to the age, they said.

Consequently, more than 600 wardens would retire from service after attaining the age of superannuation and none of them would become inspector if the current promotion criteria continued to be followed, deplored the wardens.

They said the police inspectors who were made part of the service also had to fight legal battles for years to get promotions. “But we lack resources to go against the officials who enjoy the power of showing us the door.”

Regional Police Officer Riffat Mukhtar Raja had promised that he would take up the issue of promotion criteria with the government so that the wardens’ apprehensions could be addressed. The RPO, they said, had recently held a darbar of wardens in which he had asked them about their complaints and he had been informed that a majority of the wardens was feeling insecure due to a lack of promotion criteria.

The wardens were dejected and unable to efficiently perform their duties as they believed neither any sort of punishment nor award would effect their rank. Even after more than a decade of service, they said, they were still serving in the grade of sub-inspector.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2020