ISLAMABAD, Dec 27: The government has allowed the posting of the lower staff of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, including the Press Information Department (PID), to Pakistan Missions abroad in compliance with the January 2000 orders of the Federal Ombudsman.

A notification issued by the information ministry stated that all staff members of the ministry and its attached departments from Grade 1 to 16 would now be eligible for consideration and selection against staff posts in the Information Sections of Pakistan’s Missions abroad.

The decision to this effect came after accepting an appeal of junior employees of PID, who had requested President Pervez Musharraf to set aside a February 15, 2006 judgment of the Federal Ombudsman in which he had declined to intervene on a violation of its earlier order concerning the posting of PID staff to Pakistan Missions abroad.

Under Article 32 of the Establishment of the Office of Wafaqi Mohtasib (Federal Ombudsman) Order 1983, any person aggrieved by a decision or an order of Wafaqi Mohtasib can approach the president within 30 days of the decision.

The petitioners had moved a contempt of court petition to the Wafaqi Mohtasib office in July 2005 seeking intervention over the reported violation of its November 2000 findings by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, as the ministry had not posted them to Pakistan Missions abroad despite their selection as stenographers by the ministry in 2003.

In its November 2000 judgment the ombudsman had recommended to the information ministry to streamline its policy by fixing a reasonable quota of PID officials, especially when the employees of the attached departments of Manpower and Overseas Pakistanis Division were posted abroad.

Under the new rules, all staff members including assistant information officers and the information assistants working in attached departments like the Directorate of Film Publication (DFP), Information Services Academy (ISA), External Publicity (EP) Wing, Internal Publicity (IP) Wing, Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), Cyber Wing and Administrative Wing are eligible to be considered for foreign postings.