An unprecedented number of BPS-22 officers, said to be as many as 50, are working in the federal secretariat, excluding Salman Farooqui, Secretary of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), Secretary Senate, Secretary of the National Assembly Wajid Rana along with two retired generals in Defence Division and Production, sources in the Establishment Division said on Saturday.
Unlike previous governments, the PPP government opened up the floodgates of bureaucratic promotions from grade 20 to 21 and grade 21 to 22. Sources said there are 170 other officers awaiting promotions in Grade-21 after getting rapid promotions in 44 Divisions, excluding autonomous and regulatory bodies. Interestingly, the devolution of various ministries did not succeed in reducing the size of the bureaucracy, sources said.
In a case, the Supreme Court ruled that no extensions will be given. Yet contracts were awarded to many retired persons. In fact, three most important Divisions were run by retired officers on contract (i) Wajid Rana, who was given a contract last November as special secretary Finance Ministry, (ii) Munir Ahmad was hired as Special Secretary in Establishment Division on a two-year contract and (iii) Special Secretary for Water and Power Hayatullah Khan.
The PPP's five years in government has seen six Secretary Finance. Dr Waqar Masood alone was in and out three times. He was replaced by Farukh Qayyum who was again substituted by Waqar. Then Salman Siddique was brought in to replace Waqar again but only for a few months. The most important ministry was subsequently run by a retired official Wajid Rana and again an adviser and acting secretary is running the Finance Ministry. The PPP government changed seven chairmen of Federal Board of Revenue in five years: Abdullah Yousuf, Ahmad Waqar, Sohail Ahmad, Salman Siddique, Mehtab Rizwi (acting charge), Mehmood Alam and now, another contractual employee, Ali Arshad Hakeem, for two years.
National Assembly's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) pointed out in audit reports that in many cases the bureaucracy became the judge and the jury when they wrote summaries for their own benefit. When 54 officers were moved to grade-22 in one go by former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Nargis Sethi, then Principal Secretary to the PM, was accused of orchestrating that to benefit her batch mates as well as herself.
Misusing official vehicles and fuel for picking up children from school and for buying groceries also increased manifold during the past five years. The situation was so bad that the Auditor-General informed the PAC that 14,000 cars out of the total of 18,000 in 296 government departments were being misused.
A system was devised to end the usage of official cars. A Grade-22 officer, instead of official perks, was given around Rs 225,000 a month as monetisation package that includes around Rs 90,000 as transport compensation. In the end, they got the cars and the money. The situation in autonomous bodies is even worse. The Presidency, the PM Secretariat, Ogra, Nespak, Pemra and PTA and a host of regulatory bodies are enjoying special privileges in salary and perks.
PM Raja Pervaiz Asharaf also kept signing summaries from the Establishment Division even on Saturdays. Sources said that they feared this might bring the Supreme Court and the ECP in conflict with the government. The SC might consider this a violation of its earlier orders while the ECP might see it as a form of pre-poll rigging, considering that these officials might feel obliged by the promotions and favour the PPP in the next elections.
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