The manhandling and arrest of 100 provincial service officers at the Civil Secretariat on Friday is a serious comment on the state of governance in the Punjab. Seven of them were suspended and all of them now await disciplinary action for demonstrating for their rights.
A Punjab government spokesmans claim that some provincial officers were taken into custody for threatening the staff and disrupting official business was rebuffed by the PCS Officers Association. But there was no official explanation why was the police unleashed on officers who gathered outside the Chief Secretarys office to demonstrate peacefully against the manhandling and arrest of some of their colleagues who were distributing pamphlets containing their demands and a strike call for March 21. The argument that the protesting officers should have tried to get the issue resolved through dialogue rather than indulging in trade union activities cannot be disputed. It is also true that some of their demands have already been met through negotiations with a high-powered committee constituted by the CM but the government has remained unresponsive to their call for abolishing the 1993 seat sharing formula between the District Management Group and the Provincial Management Service. The issue can be resolved by replicating the model in place in other provinces. The most unfortunate aspect of Fridays incident was that it happened on the watch of Punjabs top bureaucracy and no attempt was made to defuse the situation.
This brings into questions the claims of good governance in the countrys largest province where government servants are being subjected to police torture only because they are seeking their lawful rights. Doctors are on a strike. This has led to the closure of emergency wards in public hospitals across the province but the health department authorities are not prepared to review the policy vis–vis their demands. The situation calls for the CMs immediate intervention before his blue-eyed boys turn it into a major crisis.
