LAHORE: The federal government is likely to appoint a new chief executive officer/senior general manager for the Pakistan Railways and issue a notification by the end of this week. Names of six senior officers are under consideration.

Changes at key positions in the department are also expected after appointment of the new CEO, Dawn has learnt.

“By end of this week, the government is likely to appoint a suitable officer to head the PR and issue a notification in this regard,” a senior official told Dawn.

“I don’t know exactly about the officer the government plans to appoint. But I think that only those officers, whose service remains in the PR at least for a couple of years, will be considered for the railways top slot,” the official, requesting anonymity, explained.

The Ministry of Railways, through the Establishment Division, had moved a summary to the prime minister for the appointment of a new CEO sometime ago since the present one (Dost Ali Leghari) is retiring. The officers whose name were forwarded to the Establishment Division and the PM for consideration included Additional General Manager (Maintenance and Services) Shahid Aziz, Walton Training School Director General Zafar Zaman Ranjha, Railways Board Secretary Farrakh Taimur, Additional General Manager (Infrastructure) Nisar Memon, Additional General Manager (Mechanical) Salman Sadiq and Kanwar Khurshid Khalid of the railways commercial and traffic group. “Aforementioned officers are of BPS-21 and eligible for the slot,” the official added.

The official said that one of the senior most officers, Abdul Hameed Raazi (BPS-22) from the Civil Superior Service’s 14th Common (Pakistan Railways’ group), was mainly eligible for the slot. But his name was not included in the list just because of his service, which just remained for 5/6 months or so.

“It is a general perception or impression in the railways that the officers having service period of three to six months normally do not work wholeheartedly since they consider this (being CEO) as ‘time passing’ before retirement,” he explained. “But, this time, all senior officials in the ministry are of the view that the CEO must have a service length of at least at least two years or above. Besides this there is a consensus to empower the new CEO so that he could run the administrative, functional and operational affairs of the department independently without any pressure.”

According to another source, the name of Mr Raazi was mentioned in the first paragraph of the summary that claimed that he was being posted somewhere in the federal government.

“Though he was the most senior in the PR and eligible for the slot, he himself refused to head the department due to some personal reasons,” he claimed.

When asked why the government didn’t prefer to hire an experienced professional for the slot from the private sector for a period of three years, the official said the PM also supported this idea but it would hurt the senior officers working already in the department. That’s why this plan was not workable.

“But this plan is being worked out for appointments in the mega ML-1 project that will be executed under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC),” he said.

On the other hand, the federal government on Tuesday appointed Mr Abdul Hameed Raazi as member (Incharge) Federal Ombudsman (Punjab) and issued a notification in this regard.

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2020