LAHORE – In an unprecedented development, nearly 100 Provincial Management Service (PMS) officers have been arrested after they started protesting for their demands in the Punjab Civil Secretariat on Friday.
Things flared up when two PMS officers, Rana Ziaullah and Imran Sial, were arrested by police while they were distributing pamphlets carrying demands of provincial service officers and a call for strike starting from March 21. The additional chief secretary took notice of the situation and ordered the DSP to detain the officers, upon which all provincial service officers came out of their offices in the Civil Secretariat to protest the detention.
Later, the gates of the Civil Secretariat were locked from outside restricting the protesters from going outside the secretariat premises. The police then entered the secretariat and arrested scores of protesters which included gazetted officials, including magistrates, section officers, deputy secretaries and additional secretaries of provincial prime cadre on the orders of the chief secretary and Lahore commissioner.
Chief Secretary Tariq Mehmood Khosa, Punjab Inspector General of Police Javed Iqbal, Home Secretary Shahid Khan, Lahore Commissioner Nadeem Hassan Asif were present on the premises when the arrests were made. The arrested officers were shifted to various police stations in prison vans. After the arrests, around 700 officers and officials gathered outside the chief secretary’s office to protest the aggression.
Addressing the gathering, Rai Manzoor Nasir demanded registration of case against the additional chief secretary and DSP under criminal sections for illegally detaining two section officers. They also chanted slogans against the District Management Group (DMG) officers and declared their posting in provincial administration illegal and unconstitutional. Nasir said PMS officers and Secretariat Employees Association would remain on strike until the removal of DMG officers from the province.
Meanwhile, the administration locked all entry and exist gates of the secretariat and asked the police to arrest the protesting officials. CCPO Aslam Tareen said the officials were arrested under Section 154 of the CrPC on directions of Lahore DCO and commissioner.
Later in the night, reports said the Punjab government had terminated 20 PMS officers for taking the law into their hands and provoking staff and other officers to protest and call strike against the government.
