ISLAMABAD: Senior bureaucrats on Sunday requested the prime minister to allow the Selection Board to consider promotions of civil servants with cases that are pending investigations for more than one year.
According to reports, the Establishment Division proposed that the issue of deferment due to pending inquiries also be addressed. Such deferment might be restricted to one year in the case of departmental inquiries and three years in the case of inquiries/investigation by the Anti-Corruption Establishment as it would be unfair to make an officer deserving a promotion to wait for an indefinite period of time.
Besides this, the secretaries also suggested that the timelines provided in the Efficiency and Discipline Rules should be adhered to in this regard the threshold of efficiency index should also be re-evaluated as this would be based on empirical evidence.
“It was pointed out in the meeting that the selection boards did not have much space to apply collective judgment in a meaningful and structured manner. As a result, many officers, otherwise not worthy, managed to defeat the filters and get past the board,” state documents available with Pakistan Today.
The documents further state that divergent views were expressed regarding the proposed increase in the weightage to be given to the Central Selection Board (CSB)/Departmental Selection Board (DSB).
It was argued that this was essential to empower the boards to make an objective assessment of the officers and be able to decide whether they deserved to be promoted or not. The current weightage meant that officers could be promoted even if considered below average by the board.
It was also argued, however, that 30 per cent weightage for the board’s evaluation would be unfair considering the fact that it may not be possible for members of the selection boards to fully know all the officers whose cases are under consideration. It was, therefore, suggested that the quantification criteria of Performance Evaluation Reports (PERs), Training Evaluation Reports (TERs) and CSB/DSB might be revisited giving more weightage to PERs and TERs.
Furthermore, the secretaries committee also proposed that the age limit for exemption from mandatory training be strengthened and reviewed. For this purpose, training need assessment is already underway by the National School of Public Policy (NSPP) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
It was mutually agreed that the proposed limit of 57 years was not appropriate and should be limited to ‘1-2 years prior to superannuation’.
