KP approves changes to scheduled posts

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to withdraw the posts of eight chairmen of the Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISEs) from the schedule of posts and restrict the posting of provincial service officers to the Civil Secretariat.
It also decided that all the field posts of assistant commissioners (ACs), assistant political agents (APAs) and additional assistant commissioners (AACs) will go to the officers of the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS).
The chief minister has already approved the summary (copy available with The News) of the Establishment Department seeking changes to the schedule of posts and withdrawal of the Civil Petition Leave for Appeal (CPLA) in the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SC) against the judgment of the Peshawar High Court (PHC) terming the inclusion of eight chairmen of BISEs in it as illegal.
After the implementation of the provincial government’s decision and withdrawal of the CPLA, only the posts of the provincial civil service (PCS) and provincial management service (PMS) officers will not be hacked, but their posting will also be restricted to the secretariat.
The summary that was submitted to the chief minister by secretary Establishment on March 5 said that certain posts in autonomous and semi-autonomous bodies have been included in the schedule of posts.
It may be mentioned that the previous governments through a cabinet decision following the 18th Amendment among other alterations in schedule of posts also included eight posts of chairman BISEs, heads of 1122 and other authorities in the schedule.
However, as put in the summary the PHC declared the inclusion of eight BS-20 posts of Chairman BISEs in it as illegal and without lawful authority. However, the provincial government filed CPLA against the PHC orders, which is still pending in the Supreme Court.
As proposed in the summary approved by the chief minister the provincial government planned to amend the schedule of posts from BS-17 to BS-22 after deleting posts provided in the statues of the authorities, autonomous and semi-autonomous bodies.It will also distribute the schedule posts among the PAS and PCS-PMS officers for the purpose of promotion, transfer and postings as per the notified sharing formula of 1993.
Under this formula, the PAS will get 65 percent posts in BS-21, 60 percent in BS-20, 50 percent in BS-19, 40 percent in BS-18, and 25 percent in BS-17. This seems to be inverted pyramid method of posting for the PAS officers as in each upper grade posts their share increases. For the PCS officers it will be a perfect pyramid because with each posting at higher grade their share decreases.
The PCS officers will get 75 percent posts in BS-17, 60 percent in BS-18, 50 percent in BS-19 and 40 percent in BS-20. In BS-21 their share will come down to 35 percent posts against the 65 percent share of the PAS in the same scale.
It has also been proposed that in case of BS-17, the PAS officers will be given the field posts of ACs, APAs, and AACs availing even more opportunities for career progression, while the PMS officers will get the posts of section officers in this grade.
The provincial government will also ask the Establishment Division Islamabad to consider only the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa domiciled PAS officers for posting and promotion on the posts falling vacant in the province in their share.
Meanwhile, the coordination council of the PCS and PMS officers rejected the decision of the government and pursued the opposition in the provincial assembly to take up the matter as per Article 240(b) of the Constitution the provincial legislature is the custodian of the provincial services.
Sikandar Sherpao, parliamentary party leader of the Qaumi Watan Party (QWP), also raised the issue on the floor of the provincial assembly on Friday. The issue was then referred to the Law Reforms Committee of the House that will meet on April 7 to take up the matter.