Cabinet considers babus’ tenure security today

ISLAMABAD: At a time of weakening bureaucratic structure, the federal cabinet is scheduled to meet today (Thursday) for considering approval of summary of the Establishment Division for providing security of tenure of top civil servants.

According to official agenda for the cabinet meeting scheduled to be held on November 15, 2018 and available with The News states that the federal cabinet under chairmanship of Prime Minister Imran will take up 11point agenda, including approval of cabinet for renewal of aerial work licence class-II (domestic and international) of VIP flights, Government of Punjab for a further period of one year with effect from September 30, 2018. The Punjab government requires this permission for allowing usage of VIP flights for another one year up to September 2019.

The security of tenure of civil servants has become problematic area in the civil service and many bureaucrats claim that lack of security of tenure and continuous interference of political masters into affairs of bureaucracy had caused much damaged to the performance and governance structure of the country. Now, it is yet to see that how much the government will be able to implement its policy of protecting the tenure of senior civil servants if the cabinet grants its assent on the proposal forwarded by the Establishment Division with the purpose to improve governance and social service delivery.

Although, plenty of reports were made in the past on the name of civil service reforms, but it had never got implemented. For instance, during the tenure of PPP led regime on the insistence of the Planning Commission the government had introduced monetisation of cars for top bureaucrats, but this scheme was misused by almost all power baboos and now they were enjoying official cars as well as substantial amount on monthly basis.

The cabinet will also consider approval for ratification of the agreement on transfer of convicts signed between Pakistan and Republic of Azerbaijan. The ministry of commerce has forwarded a summary to the federal cabinet for granting permission to allow transit trade of 01X20 feet container STC containing 5 packages of spare parts of Toyota vehicles (banned items) of UNAMA from Karachi to Kabul. The federal cabinet is going to take up approval of centralised procurement of ICT infrastructure to ensure E-Readiness of federal government for implementation of E-Government programme. The implementation on this project was underway from last several years, but it had never been completed despite passing of long time.

The cabinet is all set to consider approval of signing of memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination Government of Pakistan and the Republic of Rwanda in the field of health.

The cabinet meeting chaired by the PM will also take up approval of sign of an MoU on cooperation in the field of Disaster Management between Afghan National Disaster Management (NDMA) Govt of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and Govt of Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

The cabinet will also grant approval of additional charge of Managing Director, Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC). The cabinet will also grant ratifications to the decisions taken by the ECC in its meeting held on 07-11-2018.