Islamabad:
A week after advertising to hire federal secretaries of the economic ministries in the private sector, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was a committee on Friday to examine the induction of sectoral experts in more appropriate public service.
The Ministerial Committee includes the Minister of Climate Change, Dr. Musaddiq Malik, the Minister of Power Sardar Awais Laghari, Secretary of Commerce Jawad Paul and the president of FBR Rashid Langrial. He was responsible for completely deliberating the proposal.
The committee’s conclusions will also be aligned with the work of two other committees led by the Minister of Finance Muhammad Aurangzeb and the Minister of Planning Ahsan Iqbal.
This decision comes only six days after the government has published media advertising looking for private sector professionals for the main roles of the public service, which has aroused concerns among certain federal and bureaucrats of the potential impact on governance and institutional integrity.
Prime Minister Shehbaz has ordered the training of a committee to finalize usable proposals for the restructuring of other ministries and institutions, taking into account the reforms of the Ministry of Energy, according to a press release published by the Prime Minister’s office.
“The Committee will also focus on recruiting the best workers, the alignment of ministries with modern systems and improving governance through reforms,” said the PM office.
The sources said that at the meeting on the problems of the electricity sector, some of the participants had raised serious concerns about the impact of the decision on hiring the main accounting officials and other free market experts.
There was a strong opinion in the meeting that the office of the federal secretary cannot be replaced by individuals with a limited or without responsibility of their decisions. One of the arguments was that foreign investments were not taken by the secretaries, but the reasons were rather different. The lack of holiness of contracts would be one of the reasons for these reasons discouraging foreign investments.
Participants had no problem with the induction of people against higher quality positions, but there were concerns concerning the level of entry, whether they are made by federal secretaries or inductions should come from 20 or 21st year, the sources said.
The Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and the Establishment, Ahad Khan Cheema, said that there was no change in the previous decision, which was to establish a pool of competent and experienced people.
The government has published advertisements during the weekend to hire seven individuals from the “dynamic” private sector for federal secretaries.
However, advertising did not appoint divisions, qualification criteria and post descriptions. He invited the applications of “dynamic and experienced professionals for the role of the main accounting managers (ITP), technical advisers, responsible for organizations in key economic fields,” said the announcement. A two -week deadline is given for submission of requests.
Advertising, published on the website of the establishment’s division, did not appoint the divisions, qualification criteria and post descriptions. However, he suggested that the government should hire seven federal secretaries in the private sector to manage the ministries related to the economy.
These are the finance division, the oil division, the energy division, the planning division, the industries and the production division, the National Division of Food Security and Professional Education and Training. These divisions are currently led by officers of the all-powerful Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS).
A federal minister objected that the position of his secretary is announced without consulting him first.
Pakistan’s economic ministries are mainly led by PAS officers and there have been criticisms that many of them do not have the required experience to understand the complexity of economic issues.
The Prime Minister said that the transformation of the obsolete system into a model of modern, digital and effective governance was among the government’s priorities, because economic development and prosperity were impossible without modernizing the system to respond to contemporary demands.
The Prime Minister responsible for introducing reforms to improve the performance of ministries and hire expert services in each sector. The Prime Minister said the country could not progress with the system in place for seven decades.
The participants in the meeting argued that instead of bringing federal secretaries, the capacity should be accumulated by technical induction on a contractual basis or in the lateral entry of intermediate level in the public service.
Direct induction as main accounting manager is largely not tested without exposure to public sector management and to political and parliamentary supervisors who prohibit the induction of the secretary’s information technology.
According to some bureaucrats, the best professionals in the private sector in this high -risk environment will not join the current management remuneration scales and special remuneration scales. The existing elements on the management scale of the management are not of high quality, they argued.
Young provincial officers also hesitate to work in the federal government due to a better service structure in the provinces.
The federal government had a few years in a few years ago, given 140% executive allowance for bureaucrats on the grounds that the provinces of the provinces were not ready to work at the center due to the best payment packages offered by the federative units.
