Civil servants will be required to declare assets annually

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government has decided to make it mandatory for civil servants to declare their assets annually under the new Civil Servants Promotion (Grade-18 to Grade-21) Rules, 2020. According to the documents, the reforms have been made in the promotion rules of the civil servants with the objective to transform it into a merit-based, depoliticized cadre of professionals.

These rules will deal with the promotion of civil servants in a comprehensive manner as the bar of "promotion threshold" has been raised. The conditions for promotion include: mandatory submission of declaration of assets; ensuring promotions to be objective; transparent and merit based; collective judgment of the promotion board has become more relevant (more marks for the board; from 15 percent to 30 percent).

The Civil Service (Retirement from Service) Rules, 2020, will make performance review of all civil servants after 20 years of service mandatory. Regular reviews will be done even after 20 years of service. The government will have the option to retire civil servants after 20 years of service by following the prescribed procedure.

In the retirement rules, it says, "Section 13 of the Civil Servants Act envisages that civil servants shall retire after 20 years of service, as may be directed by the competent authority and where no such direction is given, on reaching 60 years of service."

The option of retirement after 20 years of service has never been exercised by the government, resulting in assured career path till 60 years, discouraging initiative and competition. Under these reforms, no PAS/PSP officer will be allowed to serve for more than 10 years continuously in a province/Islamabad.

Transfers to other provinces or Islamabad will be made on completion of 10 years. It will be a mandatory condition for the promotion to BS-21 under which the serving officers will be rotated in phases.

The career progression policy for the PAS/PSP/OMG officers has been finalized ensuring merit-based placements to have "the right officer for the right job", structured career progression by placing the specialist/generalist balance in effect. This concept of All Pakistan Services has been seriously compromised and to overcome this issue, new rotation policy is being introduced.

Under these reforms, first allocation of all officers will be made outside the province of domicile and there will be no transfer from the province of first allocation on any ground. It has been made mandatory to stay outside the home province in grade 17 and 18 (males for five years, and females three years) for the promotion to grade 19.

Two years' of service in hard areas has been made essential for promotion to grade 20, which would not be applicable to female officers and these hard areas would be notified by the Establishment Division. Presently, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan are notified as hard areas.

The skill enhancement will be considered to have a core group of sector specific professionals. For grade 17 and grade 18, it envisages gaining adequate command over the regional / provincial language of the province of posting.

Other conditions will be to initiate self-sustaining public welfare initiative(s) in the area of their responsibility aimed at better service delivery, development of a case study based on the field experiences of the area, to be taught at Civil Services Academy or the National School of Public Policy.

The OMG officers must complete two tenures of three years each in the federal government in two main ministries of diverse sectors. Under this initiative, Grade 19 officers should have the opportunities for obtaining foreign qualifications and trainings in selected areas of specialization.

For PSP officers, the training requirements must also include more practical aspects relating to law and order as well as security. Specialized courses in counter terrorism, counterintelligence, investigation, crime prevention and counter-extremism and radicalization are essential.

Officers from Provincial Management Service/Provincial Civil Service from all provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan will be provided opportunity of induction in the Pakistan Administrative Service. Moreover, the sector-specific specialization is imperative for holding positions of higher responsibility in grade 20 and beyond.

It also refers to open selected positions of grade 20 in identified ministries/divisions in the Federal Secretariat to officers/persons with relevant technical expertise, qualifications and experience, so as to enhance provision of sound technical advice to top management for better informed policy making.

The grade 21 positions must be filled with officers who are generally considered capable of reaching and manning grade 22 positions. It was noted that a large number of share of PAS positions in provinces remain vacant and need rationalization.

So in order to address the issue, the cadre strength will be reduced by more than 600 to approximately 1,300 posts from the existing 1,900 plus posts. These posts will be filled by the provinces overcoming the shortages there. The Federal Secretariat positions in selected ministries will be filled by technical experts through a competitive process.

About performance management, the present evaluation system is very subjective as there is no distinction between the good and poor performers, lacking link with compensation and rewards. It also does not provide information about capabilities and potential of the officers and connection between the performance goals and performance evaluation.

The cabinet has already approved the performance management reforms, which have the salient features such as performance audit through agreements to be signed between the minister concerned and the prime minister. All the 40 ministries/divisions will enter into performance agreements starting 1st July, 2020, first draft by 30th April and final draft by 31st May and signing of contract will take place by 30th June this year.

A pilot phase, in this regard, is being launched on Monday, 17th February. It involves signing of performance agreement by the prime minister with 10 ministries for the third and fourth quarters of financial year 2019-2020. Under it, forced ranking system is being introduced including, outstanding: 20 percent, very good: 30 percent, good: 30 percent, average: 10 percent and below average: 10 percent.

The performance evaluation of the officers will be based on quantifiable KPIs and job descriptions; work has already started to start implementation from the start of next financial year 2020-2021. New rules also contain new efficiency and discipline rules, which focused on elimination of the tier of authorized officer, placing time limit for the inquiry officer for a period of 60 days and for the concerned authority a period of 30 days. The law will introduce new penalties including; fines, forfeiture of past service and recovery of embezzled money.