ISLAMABAD, Sept 16: The military government has assigned the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) the task of restructuring and rationalising various ministries, divisions and autonomous bodies, Dawn learnt here.
Official sources said the chief executive’s secretariat had issued a directive to the NRB to review the progress made on the rightsizing programme and examine whether further reduction was possible in the government employees’ strength.
The NRB has also been asked to study in detail the workload, productivity and contribution of various ministries and autonomous bodies in the national economy and suggest where the staff strength was lower or higher than required and justify it with the productivity.
The federal ministries, divisions and their attached autonomous bodies have also been directed to cooperate with the NRB and provide it with relevant data. The decision, say the sources, gives a new lease of life to the think-tank that would had become redundant after the referendum and October elections.
The cabinet had decided last year to reduce staff strength by around 42,000 from the government setup under recommendations of the committee on restructuring and rightsizing.
The committee had recommended that the office staff ratio in federal divisions that was 1:4.5 in 2000-01 should be reduced to 1:3.2 in 2001-02 and to 1:2.5 during 2002-03.
Various ministries had voluntarily offered to abolish as many as 26,587 posts, most of which were vacant at the time. Around 90 per cent of the rightsizing programme in various ministries has been completed.
Against a target to abolish 26,587 posts on voluntary basis, over 23,500 posts have so far been abolished. Early this month, the president had directed the ministries to abolish the remaining posts against the target in the current month.
The ministries which met their targets are: the water and power ministry with 10 posts; railways, 14,413); religious affairs, seven; interior division, 212; health, 39; establishment, 254; environment, five; and economic affairs, 105.
The cabinet division, culture and sports, industries and production, information and media development, labour and manpower, narcotics control, planning commission, population welfare, women development and science and technology ministries failed to meet their targets.
The communications ministry abolished 6,228 posts against the target of 8,097. Commerce ministry could achieve only 20 per cent of target by reducing 132 posts, education division achieved 18 per cent target with 62 posts, finance by 11 per cent with reduction of six posts, Kashmir affairs 86 per cent with 774 posts, petroleum 31 per cent with 73 posts and statistics division 91 per cent with 180 posts.