LAHORE, July 30: Finding the present system faulty, the Punjab government has decided to amend the promotion rules of all departments by the end of next month, clearing a huge backlog of cases.

It has also warned all administrative secretaries to ensure completion of all pending ACRs of their departments’ officials by August 15 otherwise stern action would be taken against those responsible for the delay. The action can include suspension from service.

The decision was announced and the direction was given during a meeting of the provincial selection board, which was presided over by Chief Secretary Javed Mehmood.

Official sources informed Dawn after the meeting that a committee under the additional chief secretary would finalise the amendments to the rules in the light of the recommendations already sent by the provincial departments.

The rules would finally be amended in early September with chief minister’s approval, they said.

The existing rules were extremely faulty, and the selection board had been acting merely as a rubber stamp, promoting officers without considering merit, the official sources said.

“By amending the rules we are going to bring our promotion process on a par with that of the federal government to give the province the real missing human resource,” they said.

They said during the rule amendment process, all pending promotion cases, which were hundreds in number, would be cleared in August. “We are going to hold a meeting of the selection board every Thursday next month to clear the backlog,” Secretary Services Fawad Hussan Fawad said.

He said all the pending cases would be cleared according to the existing promotion rules, while the new criteria would be applied to fresh cases with effect from October 2008.

Meanwhile, the chief secretary told all the secretaries to have the ACRs in their departments completed by August 15, and any delay would be considered misconduct on part of reporting and the counter-signing officers.

“This is unprecedented because so far the officers whose ACRs are delayed have been the sufferers. But now the officers causing the delay are going to face the music,” said Mr Fawad.

Earlier, the board cleared 29 officers of six departments for promotion after considering about 150 cases. The officers belonged to Tevta, agriculture, information, irrigation, livestock and higher education departments.