LAHORE: Procedural hiccups are hampering the payment of monthly salaries to the families of the Punjab government officials who died during service, adding to their financial woes and badly affecting the policy the provincial government made late last year to facilitate them.

According to official sources on Friday, the families of at least nine government officials who were the employees of the provincial Services and General Administration Department (S&GAD) but were working in other departments or in the field were without any money since the officials died during service many months ago.

“Salaries are immediate relief for the bereaved families as they will get pensions only after the superannuation of their deceased bread earners. But we are unable to arrange the salaries for them because of procedural complications,” a senior official said.

According to documents obtained by Dawn, the government had announced that it would continue paying salaries of such officials as die in-service till the age retirement to their families besides giving them other post-death benefits. It was later clarified by the finance department that the parent department of a deceased civil servant shall create a post of officer on special duty (OSD) for giving salary to the bereaved family against this post and allocate sufficient funds in its budget for the purpose. It was further stated that in principle, the post of the OSD should be created in the department where the civil servant was serving at the time of his/her death.

The official said the departments concerned were not paying any proper attention to creating the posts of OSDs as per the finance department instructions. As a result, the families of the deceased officials were suffering because of inordinate delays in the payment of salaries.

The S&GAD created nine posts of OSDs to accommodate families of as many officials who had died while serving in other departments. But, the accountant general office was not releasing the salaries on account of the fact that the officials were not working here at the time of their death.

To resolve the issue, the official added, the S&GAD had now decided to ask the finance department to notify that it would pay salaries of its employees who died while serving in other departments or in the field so that the AG office could no more raise any objection.

The finance department had also been asked to create a post of section officer and grant it Rs225m for handling this matter.

Published in Dawn, April 7th, 2018