KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah addressing a post-cabinet meeting press conference at CM House Thursday strongly criticized the federal government for launching unrealistic rotation (transfer/ posting of PAS and PSP officers) policy and approval of controversial bills of census and EVM machine through a joint session of the parliament.
He said though PAS and PSP are the employees of the federation and federal government, but the federal government under the law is bound to have a meaningful discussion with the relevant chief minister before transfers or posting any officer from his province.
He was flanked by provincial ministers Saeed Ghani, Nasir Shah, Advisor Law Murtaza Wahab and Secretary Information Rasheed Solangi.
At the outset, the chief minister said that the federal government has withdrawn the services of four grade BS-20 PAS and seven PSP officers from Sindh and in their place sent transferred to Sindh four PAS and eight PSP officers under its rotation policy. Quoting Civil Service of Pakistan (Composition and Cadre) Rules 1954, as amended, the chief minister said Rule-15(i) read as “The transfer of an officer belonging to the Service from the Province to another or from the Federation to a province or from a province to the Federation shall be made by Prime Minister or a person authorized by him in consultation with the Chief Minister or a person authorized by him [CM].”
Murad Ali Shah said that against 26 sanctioned posts of PSP officers of Grade BS-20 almost 50 percent or 12 officers have been transferred from Sindh.
About PAS officers, he said that against their 67 sanctioned posts only 30 were working, which means Sindh has a shortage of 67 officers. The Sindh government has sanctioned strength of 16 officers of Grade BS-21 against which only four officers are working, he said.
Shah said that the federal government without consulting him is transferring PAS and PSP from Sindh and officers from the other provinces are being sent to Sindh. He said the provincial cabinet has rejected the transfer order of the officers issued by the Establishment Division.
He asked the Establishment Division not to harass the officers for joining where they have been transferred and allow them to work in Sindh. “Different districts of this province have different dynamics; therefore, the officers who have worked here have ample experience to deal with the situations here,” he said, adding that if the new officers were posted in different areas it would create serious issues.
The chief minister, talking about the census, said that his government has serious reservations. Giving an example of house count, he said that in KPK over 3.84 million houses have been counted. Punjab has 17.1 million, Sindh 8.58 million and Balochistan 1.77 million households. He added that KP has on average 7.9 members per house, Balochistan 6.95, Punjab 6.43 and Sindh 5.58 that means Sindh has the lowest number of family members per house.
Quoting a Unicef survey, he said that it has disclosed the KPK has 7.6 members per house, Balochistan 7.7 members, Punjab 6.43 and Sindh 7.2 members per house. “This shows that Sindh has a population of 620 million. “I am surprised that the federal minister Asad Umar gave a totally baseless, unfounded and incorrect statement on the floor of the joint session.
Talking about EVM machines, Shah said that the federal government has failed to operate its electronic Vote Count system installed in the national assembly; therefore, it would not be able to operate its EVMs.
In the last general election, the Result Transmission System (RTS) had failed and various election results had become controversial, he said and added that now the PTI government has embarked upon another `fishy’ EVM system.
The chief minister said that his party was not against giving the right of vote to the overseas Pakistanis, but they would have to come here to their constituencies to cast their vote. “The families living abroad from the last many years and getting foreign nationalities do not know the ground realities of Pakistan and they have been given the right to vote from abroad, which is against the principles of democracy.
He said: “the PTI believes that the overseas Pakistanis have no idea how much bad governance it has given to the nation, how much inflation it has caused in the country and how it has destabilized important institutions.
The Chief Minister said that the provincial cabinet, in order to give incentives to the growers and to encourage them to grow more has decided to fix the support price of wheat at Rs2200 per 40 kg for season 2021-22.
He said that the federal government had opposed fixation of wheat price per 40 kg at Rs2000 last year but when wheat shortage had occurred they imported wheat from Ukraine and Russia at the rate of Rs6200 per 100 kg while they were not ready to offer Rs5000 per bag to the local growers.
The provincial cabinet after thorough discussion and deliberations has approved an amendment in Section 2(h) of Sugar Factories Control Act, 1950 under which “the crushing season shall be commenced from November 1 to November 30” for which the provincial government would issue specific notification, he said.
He said that the crushing season starts from October 1 but due to change in climate, sugarcane crop was not ready for harvesting. Therefore, an amendment has been made in the law and referred the draft amended bill to the assembly. The Punjab government has already made a similar amendment.
He said the provincial cabinet has approved a federal government programme to offer subsidies to the farmers on phosphate fertilizer during the Rabi crop 2021-22 on the 50:50 basis.
The federal government has approved that the ratio of subsidy would be 50:50 shared by the federal and provincial governments. Sindh has 21.6 percent share in the national population; therefore, its share in the subsidy would be Rs5.6 billion. If the outreach comes to 60 percent its share would be 3.3 percent, Sindh would give its share of Rs1.65 billion and the remaining Rs1.65 billion would be borne by the federal government.
However, Advisor on Agriculture Manzoor Wassan told the cabinet that during current season 2021-22, the rate of DAP is about Rs.8500 per bag as compared to Rs.3,800 during 2020-21. The subsidy would be given to small growers owning one to 16 acres of land. The provincial cabinet approved the subsidy of Rs1.65billion as its 50 percent share.
The chief minister told that the cabinet had directed the irrigation department to surrender the land which was not required to it for any essential/operational purpose. He said that the Irrigation department has surrendered 48 acres along the embankments of Rice Canal in Larkana city. He added that with passage of time 19 colonies with 1500 houses and more than 4000 population have emerged along the rice canal embankments.
The CM said that the land surrendered by Irrigation department has been allotted to Katchi Abadies to regularise the colonies as per its policy framework. He added that a similar exercise was conducted in other districts and cities of the province so that human settlements could be protected from being displaced.
He said the federal government has recently introduced a program ‘Targeted Commodity subsidy programme/ Ehsaas Raashan Madad with proposed coverage of the programme for all provinces. He said the target population of the program were the low income families living below the poverty line. He said that the total cost of the programme was said to be Rs180 billion in which the federal government’s share would be 35 percent or only Rs42 billion and the provinces would have to share 65 percent or Rs78 billion. He added that the share of the Sindh government would be Rs17.67 billion (22.65 percent of all provinces).
The cabinet discussed the matter and learnt that the beneficiary would have to register himself through an android mobile phone to get subsidies on wheat flour, sugar, oil and pulses. Therefore, the cabinet directed the chief secretary to get some clarifications from the federal government so that a suitable decision could be taken. The cabinet allowed the Excise and Taxation department to rationalise the registration, renewal fees of electric vehicles so that they could easily be registered in the province.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021