EDITORIAL: In his famous address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, Father of the Nation Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had named nepotism and jobbery as a ”great evil” that must be crushed relentlessly. The evil not only stays alive but thrives at all echelons of this country’s power structure.
Merit is the usual casualty in government and public sector jobs. Rules and policies have been devised both at the federal and provincial levels to accommodate individuals related to deceased or retired civil servants. The practice was challenged a while ago in the Peshawar High Court unsuccessfully, though. The court in its 2021 verdict rejected the plea seeking an end to policies and office memorandum regarding job quotas for civil servants’ children. The case then landed in the Supreme Court.
In its verdict announced last week a three-member SC bench, headed by the outgoing Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, declared that the rules, policies, office memorandums, etc, used to provide appointments in different grades, without open advertisement and competition, to a widow/widower, wife/husband or a child of a civil servant of federal or provincial governments, who dies during service or becomes permanently disabled//invalidated and takes retirement from service, ex facie are discriminatory against ordinary citizens.
The same, asserted the judgment, cannot be termed a reasonable classification since the object is to give an advantage to some to the exclusion of others. Cited in the context was Article 27 of the Constitution that prohibits discrimination in public as well as public sector services.
As expected, the court made an exception for the legal heirs of martyred personnel of the law enforcement agencies and civil servants dying in terrorist attacks. Also, quite understandably, the judgment is not to affect those who have already benefited from the compensation packages.
Generally, entry in government sector employment is heavily influenced by nepotism, rooted as it is in the prevailing culture of entitlements. The practice of using public office for personal gain or advantage is rampant top to bottom everywhere. More often than not, advertisements for public sector jobs are designed to induct either relatives of powerful individuals or those with political connections.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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