Government to bypass FPSC and re-employ officials

ISLAMABAD: The government has decided to directly re-employ officials in senior administrative posts instead of recruiting them through the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC), Daily Times learnt on Saturday.

To seek the cabinet’s approval in this regard, the Establishment Division moved a summary for the cabinet meeting next week. Presently, all contract or re-employment appointments exceeding a two-year period are made in consultation with the FPSC.

According to the document made available to Daily Times, the Establishment Division was of the view that the provision needed to be reviewed because the FPSC was a “recruiting agency focussing on initial appointment while re-employment or hiring people on contract can’t be treated as an initial appointment”. The issue of seeking long-term contract appointments came up before the cabinet in February last year, which decided to seek the FPSC’s advice. But the FPSC did not support the proposal arguing that such recruitment tended to strengthen belief in the indispensability of a person and also that the departments concerned did not make efforts to find suitable substitutes. The Establishment Division had concluded that keeping the contract appointment/re-employment under the purview of the FPSC for “whatever period” conflicted with the basic functions of the FPSC. It also “adds unnecessary red-tapism, which often entails a delay in filling important and sensitive positions”.

In its summary to the Cabinet Division, the Establishment Division also said that as against initial appointment, which was the FPSC’s principal task, contract appointments aimed at employing people with professional knowledge and expertise to perform specialised jobs within a specified period on terms and conditions to be settled in advance with focus on assignments. Contract appointment was thus resorted to by employers keeping in view special requirements, it added.

Similarly, re-employment of civil servants, which too was for a specific period, was a contract between retired civil servants and the government. This was done to utilise the experience of employees in jobs for which they were specially qualified. In this way, the requirements as observed by the FPSC were adhered to and there was no deviation from the prescribed procedure.

Establishment Division seeks the powers for direct recruitment of contractual employees by amending the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) Ordinance, 1977. staff report

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