Police deployed at Civil Secretariate barring officers

PCS, PMS officers to take up matter with chief minister

PESHAWAR: The civil servants associated with the Provincial Management Service (PMS) and Provincial Civil Service (PCS) groups have decided to raise with the chief minister the issue of deployment of police contingents and barring of their colleagues from entering the Civil Secretariat.

A press release issued Wednesday by the PMS and PCS action committee coordinator Fahad Ikram Qazi said that one of their colleagues was barred by the police from entering the Civil Secretariat to attend a meeting with the secretary Establishment department.

He said the high-handedness of the police had sent a wave of shock and grief among the civil servants who have decided to bring the matter to the notice of Chief Minister Pervez Khattak.

Fahad Ikram Qazi said they would also press their demand for the removal of the chief secretary. He blamed him for creating trouble between various cadres of the civil bureaucracy.

It may be added that the chief secretary and some sections of the provincial civil servants’ bodies have been at loggerheads on various services and career-related issues for the last some many months.

It led to week-long agitation by the PCS and PMS officers against the chief secretary. The strike was called off after the chief minister formed a ministerial committee to look into the matter and resolve issues between the chief secretary and other officers.

Fahad Ikram Qazi also referred to an office order issued by the secretary administration to the media on July 16 in which their right to form an association was usurped.

He said that in the handout that was later withdrawn by the Directorate of Information, the secretary administration dubbed the office-bearers of their association including Abdullah Khan Mehsud, Secretary Auqaf and chairman of the action committee, Abdul Ghafoor Baig, special secretary Higher Education, Muntazir Khan, OSD, Atta-ur-Rehman, deputy secretary Home & Tribal Areas Department, as “dubious characters’. He termed the use of such terms unethical and regrettable.

He said the order was issued only a day after the ministerial committee submitted its report to the chief minister and he approved it on July 15 to pave the way for the resolution of the problems being faced by the provincial bureaucracy. “The act of the secretary administration is an attempt to impede implementation of the recommendations of the committee,” Fahad Ikram Qazi said.

He said the secretary establishment had called a meeting of three officers, Abdullah Mehsud, Niamatullah Wazir and Muntazir Khan, to sort out contentious issues between the administration and officers.

However, Muntazir Khan was barred from entering the Civil Secretariat by the police on the directives of the Administration Department.

He said heavy contingent of the police has been deployed at the Civil Secretariat and PMS/PCS officers and members of the media are being checked and quizzed unnecessarily while entering the Civil Secretariat for the past one week.

He claimed the Home Department and Establishment Department have also been calling the deputy commissioners and commissioners to keep a “check” on the PMS officers. “All such moves are being made to impede the implementation of the report approved by the chief minister to improve the working conditions of the provincial civil servants,” he argued.

Fahad Ikram Qazi said: “We are taking the matter to the chief minister along with our longstanding demands, including the removal of chief secretary and resolution of the issue of 1993 formula for the appointment and posting of PCS and PAS officers pending with the Reforms Committee of the Provincial Assembly to put an end to the discrimination against the provincial civil servants.”