The Planning Commission (PC) has decided to review recruitment rules in the Planning and Development (P&D) Division and the PC deputy chairman gave go ahead signal to induct 100 professionals in various cadres, which is essential for strengthening and revamping of the P&D Division.
Sources told Business Recorder that deputy chairman's decision to induct 100 professionals from outside sent discouraging signals to the regular staff, whose salary improvement package, which was in the offing for the last one year, was not approved at a recent high-level meeting held in the PC.
Engineer Dr Akram Sheikh, deputy chairman PC, held a detailed meeting with senior officials of the P&D Division in order to upgrade the human resource quality in PC and P&D in accordance with the international best practices.
After the meeting, there were clear instructions to induct 100 professionals. However, the deputy chairman gave no concrete guarantee to improve the salary package of regular employees of the P&D.
The sources said that 100 professionals from private sector would be inducted on attractive packages while the regular employees were most likely to be left without being properly compensated. The salary improvement package was noted only for follow up, the sources added.
According to the sources, while chairing the meeting with senior officials of the PC and P&D, the deputy chairman approved the formation of two committees for reviewing the recruitment rules.
The committees, ie Committee on Economist Group and Committee on Technical Section and Energy Wing, would submit their reports by the end of next month, according to the sources. In the meeting, it was also agreed upon that deputy chairman would attend such meetings once every three months to ensure action is taken on the important decisions.
They said that despite the formation of two committees, no committee was tasked to give any recommendation on the improvement of salary package for the regular employees.
They said the meeting took serious notice of the non-availability of regular chief economist. It was observed that chief economist slot was being kept by an economist group official as additional charge. Such an important slot must be filled with a regular and competent official.
The sources said the recruitment rules were being revised at a time when process of induction of all top cadres, including members and advisers in the PC was over. The PC members are being given salary packages of maximum MPIs while the advisers are given the package MPI, the sources added.