Devolution plan – Commission misses March 15 deadline

ISLAMABAD – The Implementation Commission for the 18th Amendment suffered another blow on Tuesday when the lack of cooperation from the four provinces made the commission, led by Inter-provincial Coordination Minister Raza Rabbani, miss the March 15 deadline set for the second phase of devolution of another five ministries.
The commission, which met here with Rabbani in the chair, was told by the provincial chief secretaries that the provincial governments would not be able to adjust thousands of employees from the devolved ministries. A source told Pakistan Today that the chief secretaries were especially reluctant to accommodate contractual employees.
Now that the deadline had been missed, said the source, a follow up meeting would be held on March 21 to settle the issue. The source said that the provinces were asked by the Implementation Commission to accommodate thousands of employees from the education, health, culture, tourism and livestock ministries.
“The Finance Ministry told the commission that the government would provide the provinces the salaries of the employees of the ministries being devolved in the upcoming budget. However, the provinces said they could not afford paying salaries to the employees and they could only accommodate permanent employees if necessary,” added the source.
The chief secretaries asked the Finance Ministry to provide salaries for the employees for at least three years and the provincial government would be able to manage salaries on their own after that, the source said. The source said the commission also reviewed news of petitions filed in court by some Education Ministry employees against the devolution and decided to defend the devolution process in court if need be.
Following the meeting, Rabbani said the devolution process would be completed against all odds and the ministries going to be devolved in the second phase of the process would be discussed in the next meeting of the commission, due on March 21. Rabbani denied the notion that there were differences between the federal and provincial governments over the devolution process and said the federal government and the provinces were on the same page.
“We will meet the June 30 deadline on devolution and the ministries due to be devolved will be devolved by that time,” he stated. A total of 13,216 educational institutions having 1,463,554 students are working under the Education Ministry in Islamabad Capital Territory, Azad Jammu Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
The number of employees in these institutions has risen to 79,744, with 61,189 teaching and 18,555 non-teaching staff that would be affected by the devolution.