LAHORE, Aug 18: The Punjab government is considering to create a district government cadre and not a district government service, handing over the authority to appoint, transfer and post lower-grade employees to nazims.

According to official sources on Thursday there was a proposal to create district zones to create room for the district government employees’ promotion and better job prospects. It was not wise to confine the employees in a single district, they said.

The cadre is being created in view of the recent amendments in the Local Government Ordinance, which now makes it compulsory for all provincial governments to create a district service comprising all posts of local governments grouped into district and tehsil cadres with adequate monetary benefits and incentives for promotion and performance not later than December 31, 2005.

The provincial government has already notified rules for the tehsil-level local government service, empowering tehsil nazims to appoint, transfer and post officials from BPS 1 to 16. The same authority for officers in BS-17 and above still rests with the provincial government.

Sources said the authority to appoint, post and transfers BS-17 and above officers in the district governments would rest with the provincial government. Those in BS-1 to 16 and belonging to certain local government services like sanitation, taxation etc would work under the district nazims.

They said the proposal to create zones was being considered in view of the fact that officials in one district would have limited promotion prospects. There should be some mechanism to change a TMO who was not delivering or had developed differences with town nazim, they said.

They said the DCOs, TMOs, DDOs (revenues) and EDOs would be the representatives of the provincial government which should have some ways and means to interact with local governments.