PESHAWAR: The federal government has transferred Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Secretary Dr Kazim Niaz and replaced him with Dr Shehzad Bangash, an officer of Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS).
Dr Bangash had served in the past as KP additional chief secretary and Azad Jammu and Kashmir chief secretary. Presently, he has been serving as federal secretary in Islamabad.
Dr Kazim Niaz was appointed as chief secretary when KP and particularly the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government was facing a number of challenges.
He is known among the civil servants as a thorough professional, competent and honest officer.
Those who had worked with Kazim Niaz in the past three years acknowledge his hard work and commitment to his professional responsibilities.
“I worked with a number of officers but hasn’t seen a professional, competent and honest officer like Dr Kazim Niaz. As chief secretary he sincerely and wholeheartedly served the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and it’s people,” a senior civil servant remarked in Peshawar.
Pleading anonymity, he said he served KP during difficult times.
There are many achievements to Dr Kazim’s credit. It was Dr Kazim who took note of the long-delayed Peshawar Institute of Cardiology (PIC), by arranging funds for the remaining civil works and equipment and opened it for patients. It was due to his personal interest that PIC has now become the lone cardiac surgery facility in KP in the public sector, where hundreds of cardiac patients had been given services.
The PIC was started in 2008 during the Muttahidda Majlis-e- Amal (MMA) era but all the successive governments had ignored it and Prime Minister Imran Khan last year inaugurated it. Another achievement of Dr Kazim Niaz as chief secretary was his excellent work during the corona pandemic in 2020 when KP didn’t have the facility of covid investigations.
He arranged funds for the Khyber Medical University (KMU) and enabled it in acquiring the latest equipment to start investigations.
Also, it was Dr Kazim, who took personal interest in the polio eradication programme and personally visited remote areas of the province, particularly the southern districts, that used to report polio cases. He gave the task to an energetic officer, Basit Khan and kept himself constantly involved in efforts against polio eradication.
It was because of his commitment and the team he had chosen that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa became a polio-free province.
“Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had 93 wild polio cases when Dr Kazim Niaz was appointed chief secretary and he took personal interest in its eradication and the very next year KP reported 22 cases. Now since July 2020, there has not been a single polio case in KP and for the two months all environmental samples are negative and the credit goes to the chief secretary and his commitment,” a senior government official explained.
According to sources in PTI, some close circles of Prime Minister Imran Khan had informed him about the slow pace of development works in the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), and the prime minister felt as if it was due to the chief secretary.
“He called his principal secretary Azam Khan and asked him to suggest some good names for the slot of chief secretary Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Though there are very good and competent officers such as Dr Fakhre Alam, Munir Azam Khan, Dr Akbar Durrani, etc, since Dr Shehzad Bangash is 95 per cent choice of Azam Khan, therefore the prime minister selected him for this coveted position,” a senior PTI leader told The News on condition of anonymity.
He said Dr Fakhre Alam could have better a choice but since he doesn’t belong to Azam Khan’s camp, therefore, he was not considered for the important position of chief secretary.
“Dr Shehzad Bangash had never been an impressive officer when he served as additional chief secretary in KP. I don’t think the prime minister or Azam Khan would have discussed this important appointment with Chief Minister Mahmood Khan and this is the dilemma of our party,” he said.