FAISALABAD, April 3: Inordinate delay in promotion of police officers of the 1979-80 batch has left the Police Service of Pakistan officers frustrated.

In a presentation to Prime Minister Mir Zafrullah Khan Jamali, the relevant officers on Thursday expressed dismay over delay in their promotion to Grade-20, calling the treatment meted out to them unjustified.

They said this was the only case in the history of the PSP that a batch had been working on a same grade even after 24 years of service.

Selecting by the Federal Public Service Commission, the officers said they joined the force in 1979-80 in the sixth and seventh Common Training Programme. They added that during almost 23 years of service, they had been promoted only once — from ASP to SP.

Quoting the civil services rules, they said the qualifying service for promotion to BS-20 was 17 years. In many cases, the PSP officers had been promoted to Grade-20 after 13 to 15 years, they added.

The police officer pointed out that officers from the DMG, Customs, Foreign Service and Accounts Group of the sixth and seventh common batches had been promoted to the BS-20 many years ago.

After promulgation of the Police Order 2002, the fresh cadre strength of the PSP in BS-17 to 21 had not been worked out, they said, adding this was a major cause of delay in their due promotions.

According to the officers, the DMG officers could be promoted without any reference to cadre strength in the name of being the member of the All Pakistan Unified Group. However, the PSP officers, also being the APUG member, could not be promoted, they said.

They also pointed out that the posts of the PSP cadre for deputation, training and leave reserve (DTL) had been abolished to curtail the service’s strength. On the other hand, the DTL posts were included in the strength of all other service groups, they said.

The complainants maintained that 15 police officers had been promoted to BS-21 recently without creating seats in that scale to accommodate them. Consequently, they said 15 seats of BS-20 had been vacated automatically, but promotions to BS-21 had been made at the cost of officers serving in BS-19. This had further dimmed prospects of the batch’s promotion, the officer added.

They have appealed to the prime minister to convene a meeting of the Departmental Promotion Committee to consider the cases of promotion at the earliest.