ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Establishment Mohammad Shehzad Arbab has said that the government after due deliberations has allowed bureaucrats to compete for lucrative Management Pay-scale positions and opened the top secretariat posts to the private sector.

“The decision to allow the serving civil servants to compete with outsiders for MP scales was taken by the cabinet after careful deliberations at the Cabinet Committee on Institutional Reforms. In fact, we are opening up top secretariat posts, so far reserved for generalist cadre officers, to technical experts from the private sector as well as those from within the government” Mr Arbab said in a statement.

Explaining the rationale behind this decision, he said that successive governments had allowed highly qualified officers with PhD and master’s degrees from top universities to work for donor agencies but had not allowed them to use their expertise for upgrading the government’s own capacity. “There is no reservation or quota for the civil servants and they have to compete with others from outside the government,” he said.

Says it will help provide level playing field, retain competitive bureaucrats

The SAPM said that the generalists without PhD and master’s degrees and requisite experience in the field were not eligible to apply for MP scale posts. Out of total 29,000 posts of officer cadre in the federal government, only 108 belong to MP scales ­— a miniscule fraction (0.37 per cent) of the total. The opening up would provide a larger pool of applicants and level playing field to all those who met the eligibility criteria and could make it through an open and competitive process, Mr Arbab said.

He said that given the dearth of competent people staying in government, they had to find innovative ways of retaining them.

The resignations under the existing rules meant permanent severance from government service and the expertise and the experience the officials gained in MP positions were no longer available to the government, resulting in diminution of its institutional capacity.

The maximum limit to serve in these scales was five years which was not renewable, the SAPM said.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2021