KARACHI, Feb 14: The Civil Service reforms introduced in Sindh were explained in depth by Sindh chief secretary, Mohammed Javed Ashraf Hussain, at the Sindh Development Forum held at the governor’s House on Thursday.

The chief secretary pointed out that the objectives were to reform and restructure civil service for good governance, effective management, weeding out corruption and promotion of merit.

He said the objectives behind rightsizing/restructuring of the government departments were to rationalize the departments, improve efficiency, reduce financial burden, better staff deployment and freezing of vacant posts.

Under the reforms, he said, a number of provincial departments were being reduced from 29 to 23. And so far the following departments had been rightsized/downsized:

(1) Industries (SSIC, Government Press, Sugar Corporation and Directorate of Industries), (2) Irrigation and Power, (3) Social Welfare, (4) Agriculture (SASSO, SAZDA, Bureau of Prices and Supplies).

He informed that 60 per cent of employees of five departments had been absorbed and vacant posts abolished, and 35-40 per cent of employees (831) had been assigned to surplus pool, golden handshake was given to about 1844 SRTC employees and 3304 KTC employees.

He said in order to strengthen merit-based recruitment, the SPSC Ordinance 2002 had been promulgated giving financial and administrative autonomy to the commission; security of tenure to the chairman and the members (5 years), besides the increase in pay and facilities.

He said recruitments to posts BS-11 and above were now in the preview of SPSC as against BS-16 and above in the past.

Javed Ashraf informed the participants that the census of the government employees had been initiated. Census forms were circulated to all civil servants in the province and preliminary head count of provincial civil servants was near completion.

He told the Forum that during the exercise of civil servants census, some 932 ghost/absent employees were detected in the education department and 300 in the health department.

The chief secretary said that the government of Sindh was planning to establish an extensive human resource management database in the S&GAD to ensure effective management.

The chief secretary informed that the government of Sindh was planning to train civil servants through donor assistance.

He said to ensure productivity and commitment, the concept of contractual services had been formalized and so far 3500 school specific contract appointments for three years had been made in the education department.—APP