ISLAMABAD: The Central Selection Board under the chair of Capt (r) Shahid Ashraf Tarar will consider promotion cases of grade 20 and 21 officers, belong to different occupational groups of civil service of Pakistan, scheduled for August 1 to 4.
According to Establishment division, a 17 member CSB including parliamentarians (Senator Saadia Abbasi, Senator Kamran Murtaza, Senator Saleem Mandviwala, Muhammad Aslam Bhootani, Usama Qadri), 5 Grade 22 officers (Imdad Ullah Bosal, Saleh Farooqi, Dr Kazim Niaz, Pervaiz Junejo and Ghais Uddin Ahmed), 6 Ex-officio members ((Secretary Finance, Cabinet and Chief Secretaries of Punjab, Sindh, KP and Balochistan) and Secretary Interior as co-opted members for PSP besides secretary as well as DG IB, DG ISI (personal) of each division shall consider cases of Pakistan Administrative Service, Police Service of Pakistan, Office Management Group, Inland Revenue Service, Pakistan Customs, Foreign Services of Pakistan, Commerce and Trade, Pakistan Audit and Accounts Service and ex cadre and other group officials.
Sources said that the CSB meeting ahead of the departure of the present federal government disseminates a message that these promotion meetings are largely to shower “favours on civil servants” considered loyal to government of the day and award punishments to those who fall in disfavour due to one reason or the other.
Sources said that this largely like and dislike promotion strategy has eroded the very foundations of good governance and an efficient public service delivery.
The subjectivity in promotions in the civil service has continued to grow even in the face of court interventions and continued judicial scrutiny of the misuse of discretion in the promotion process.
A proforma for assessment constitutes the basis of awarding or denying promotion to any civil servant. This proforma, titled objective assessment form, has hardly anything objective in it to base the promotions thereon.
The proforma contains all subjective criteria to grant or deny promotions. The CSB members have no device to make even a subjective assessment for a promotion within the limited time available to them.
In this situation, they have to place major reliance on the input furnished by the departmental representative.
The departmental representatives usually find the CSB meetings as an opportune time to translate their likes and dislikes of subordinate civil servants into a bitter reality which the disliked subordinates are invited to taste, murdering merit in the process.
A few years back, superior courts used to be flooded with litigation after every CSB calling in question the CSB’s wild discretion in awarding or denying the five integrity marks to grant or refuse promotion to any civil servant.
The courts intervened in the matter. However, instead of the trend in civil service promotions getting reversed towards greater objectivity, the CSB came to wield even greater subjectivity in the promotion process.
Most paradoxical of all, even after court interventions to cut down subjectivity in the promotion process, CSB’s discretionary and subjectively awarded marks have been increased from 10 marks to 30 marks.
A threadbare examination of the CSB’s minutes of meetings of the past promotion meetings makes it evident that the CSB’s 30 discretionary marks have been at times used to award promotions to those who stood favourites but who had earned overall poor ratings in their performance evaluation reports and training evaluation reports.
Others who had fared better in PERs and TERs were denied promotions by withholding from them a greater part of the CSB’s discretionary 30 marks.
As if all this subjectivity in the promotion process was not enough, the prime minister has now made the promotions conditional on a civil servant earning good intelligence agency reports, thus adding one more layer of subjectivity to the already subjectivity laden promotion process.
Sources revealed that with the addition of agency reports as a condition for promotion, the influential and well connected civil servants come in a position to win promotions at the cost of those with no connections and networks to help them sail across the I-report condition.
The impression that socially stronger civil servants have better wherewithal to manage and meet the I-report condition is strengthened by the fact that some civil servants involved in big scams and scandals have won promotions to the higher grades defeating the I-report condition.
Another important yet little appreciated aspect of the I-report condition is that the lower level agency officials reportedly gather information for these reports at times choosing not to confront the concerned civil servant with the stuff likely to adversely affect that civil servant’s promotion prospects.
Ironically, one implication of the condition of I-reports to win promotion in civil service has been so far little appreciated. The implication is that the I-report condition immediately sets to naught the credibility of scores of supervisory officers of the department who write PERs, the senior members and staff of the training institutions who write TERs and also redials to zero the credibility of chairman federal public service commission and other members of the central selection board who award 30 marks for promotion which have been placed at the CSB’s discretion.
This is precisely the dilemma in civil service promotions which has thrown 220 million voiceless people of the country at the mercy of those who are unconcerned with and insensitive to their miseries and who are interested just in raising their service careers by hook or crook.
