KARACHI, Feb 13: The Sindh government has decided in principle to phase out all those officials working on a contract basis and OPS (on pay scale) and replace them with suitable officers awaiting posting.

The government has also decided that in future, there would be no posting of officers under OPS.

These decisions were taken by the Sindh cabinet in its last meeting held on Saturday. According to reliable sources, the attention of caretaker Chief Minister Justice (retd) Abdul Qadir Halepota was drawn sometime back towards the long list of officials, in almost all the high cadres, awaiting posting, while contract employees and officials below the requirement of the cadre had been assigned jobs resulting in complaints from the officials awaiting posting.

“Among contract employees there are officials whose contracts were renewed in some case more than four times, not on the basis of performance alone but due to their public relations skills with the relevant quarters,” one of the officials awaiting posting confided to Dawn.

He said the factor of likes and dislikes could not be ruled out, otherwise there was no justification for renewing contracts despite the availability of competent officials awaiting posting.

The cabinet has formed a four-member committee comprising the secretary (services) SG&CD as chairman while the secretary (GA) and secretary of the AD would be its members. The AS (services-1) would act as the secretary of the committee.

When provincial minister Arif Ali Abbasi was asked about the background of the decision, he termed it an important move towards attaining the goal of good governance.

In Sindh there are a total 12 posts of cadre 21, while 93 of cadre 20, 159 of cadre 19 and 210 of cadre 18.

There are 14 officials of grade 19 who are working as DCOs, which is an assignment for grade 20 officials while 12 officials of grade 20 are awaiting posting, the sources pointed out, adding that eight officers of grade 19 were awaiting posting while there was one official awaiting the actualisation of promotion.

Likewise, there are two officials awaiting posting in grade 18 while eight others, who were promoted to grade 18, were awaiting the actualisation of their promotion.

There are 16 officers who have been working on a contract basis in the Sindh government. Out of 16, two have been assigned posts of grade 21, six of grade 20, six of grade 19 and two of grade 18.

The officials in grade 20 awaiting posting are: Ghulam Ali Shah Pasha, Iqbal Ahmad Bablani, Safdar Ali Agha, Ahmed Faheem Mughal, Liaquat Ali, Sikander Ali Kerio, Qabool Ahmed Shaikh, Ali Ahmed Lund, Mohammad Iqbal Diwan, Karim Bux Sirohi and Iqbal Ahmed Zubedi

The officers in grade 19 awaiting posting are: Mohammad Riazuddin, Ms Naheed Durrani, Ramesh Kumar, Barkat Saeed Memon, Ghulam Akbar Leghari, Mohammad Nawaz Shaikh, Nazar Mohammad Kalhoro and Saqib Ahmed Soomro.

The officers in grade 18 awaiting posting are: Ghulam Mustafa Korai and Zulfiqar Ali Shalwani while those who were promoted to grade 18 but were awaiting actualisation are Imtiaz Rajpar, Jalaluddin Mahar, Mohammad Ali Shaikh, Makhdoom Shakeel-uz-Zaman, Chiraghuddin Hingoro, Agha Pervez, Mohammad Hussain Ghumro and Shazad Tahir Thaheem.