KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Thursday accused the federal government of having launched an ‘unrealistic rotation policy’ for transfer and posting of PAS (Pakistan Administrative Services) and PSP (Police Service of Pakistan) officers.

He said his cabinet rejected the transfer orders issued recently by the Establishment Division.

Accompanied by provincial ministers Saeed Ghani and Nasir Shah and adviser on law Murtaza Wahab, the chief minister was addressing a press conference at CM House after chairing a meeting of his cabinet.

“It is a wrong impression that the PAS and PSP officers are employees of the ‘federal government’; as a matter of fact, they are employees of ‘federation’,” he said, adding that federal government, under the relevant law, was bound to have a meaningful discussion with chief minister before transferring from or posting in province any officer.

CM terms rotation policy ‘unrealistic’, asks officers to stay on

The CM said that the federal government had withdrawn services of four Grade-20 PAS and seven PSP officers from Sindh and sent four PAS and eight PSP officers to Sindh under its rotation policy.

Quoting Civil Service of Pakistan (Composition and Cadre) Rules 1954, he 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].”

Mr Shah said that against 26 sanctioned posts of PSP officers of Grade-20 almost 50pc or 12 officers had been transferred from Sindh.

About PAS officers, he said that against their 67 sanctioned posts only 30 were working. “The Sindh government has sanctioned strength of 16 officers of Grade BS-21 against which only four officers are working,” he added.

He said that without consulting him, PAS and PSP officers had been transferred from Sindh and officers from other provinces had been sent to Sindh.

“The officers who have come here in Sindh are being allowed to join and the officers who have been transferred from Sindh have been directed to continue,” he said.

The CM asked the Establishment Division not to ‘harass’ the officers for joining where they had 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 different situations here,” he said, adding that if the new officers were posted in different areas it would create serious issues.

Census issue

The chief minister said that his government had serious reservations over census. He said that in KPK, over 3.84m houses had been counted. Punjab has 17.1m, Sindh 8.58m and Balochistan has 1.77m households. “KP has on an average 7.9 members per house, Balochistan 6.95, Punjab 6.43 and Sindh has 5.58 members per house which means Sindh has the lowest number of family members per house,” he said.

Quoting a Unicef survey, Mr Shah said that the KPK had 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 of the parliament,” he said.

Wheat support price

The CM said that the provincial cabinet had decided to fix the support price of wheat at Rs2,200 per 40kg for the season 2021-22.

The cabinet approved an amendment to the Section 2(h) of Sugar Factories Control Act, 1950 under which the crushing season that started on Nov 1 would continue till Nov 30.

Subsidy on fertiliser

He said the cabinet approved a federal government programme to offer a subsidy to farmers on phosphate fertilizer during the Rabi crop 2021-22 on a 50:50 basis. It also allowed the excise and taxation department to rationalise the registration/renewal fee of electric vehicles so that they could easily be registered in the province.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2021