Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has approved a summary for relaxing the ban on recruitments in four categories of public sector institutions that will pave the way for filling these 22,000 vacant posts.

“Yes, the prime minister has approved a summary of the Finance Division to fill around

22,000 vacant posts in four selected categories,” a senior official of the PM Secretariat confided to The News here on Wednesday night.

The official said that the first category would be institutions, which were responsible for ensuring security of the country. The government, he said, has relaxed the ban on recruitments in the Frontier Constabulary, Pakistan Rangers, Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Motorway Police and such other institutions to fill around 13,000 vacant posts.

In order to ensure improved security situation, it was imperative to fill the posts of security related institutions in the country, the official argued.The second category was tax administration and around 2,100 posts will be filled in the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and other revenue departments that are playing a key role in generating the desired revenues.

“Yes, the PM has granted permission for filling the vacant posts in the FBR,” a top official confirmed to this scribe.

In the third category, posts will be filled in poverty reduction and social safety net related institutions. There are around 3,000 to 4,000 posts, which will be filled in the Benazir Income Support Programme, Pakistan Bait-ul Mal and Utility Stores Corporation (USC).

The fourth category is the areas where the government is striving hard to ensure regional equity such as Fata, GB and Balochistan.Answering another query, the official said that the government did not relax the rules for filling these vacant posts so they will be advertised in order to ensure transparency and merit.

The salary bill, according to the sources, will go up by Rs10-15 billion with the filling of these posts.Under its austerity measures, the government had imposed a ban on all recruitments in the public sector institutions.

The country’s budget deficit (gap between revenues and expenditures) widened to 8.53 percent of the GDP in the last financial year that ended on June 30, 2012, the highest in the country’s history.For the current fiscal year, the government has envisaged a budget deficit of 4.7 percent of the GDP, which many economists believe is unachievable.