Thirty-Nine secretaries moved to Grade 22 | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF)

Pakistan Press Foundation

Thirty-Nine secretaries moved to Grade 22

By Imran Ali Teepu

ISLAMABAD: A board headed by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani promoted 39 federal secretaries to grade 22 here on Thursday.

Talking to journalists, the prime minister said: “The promotions have been made on merit and in a transparent manner in accordance with the Supreme Court’s decision (on previous promotions). Even the principal secretary to the prime minister (Nargis Sethi) has not been promoted.”

Among the promoted officers are two former spokesmen of the foreign affairs ministry, Masood Khan and Jalil Abbas Jilani, who are serving as ambassadors to China and Belgium, respectively.

The finance ministry now has three BS-22 officers after the promotion of Special Secretary Asif Bajwa and Additional Secretary Mohammad Ayub Khan Tarin, who will work along with Finance Secretary Salman Siddique.

Another well-known bureaucrat who has been promoted is Maj (retd) Chaudhry Qamar Zaman, the secretary in charge of the interior ministry. He got his minutes of fame in December last year when he was suspended by the prime minister for including Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar’s name in the Exit Control List, due to which the minister had to give up his plans to travel to China. Mr Zaman had served as aide-de-camp (ADC) to the late Gen Ziaul Haq.

Federal Bureau of Statistics Secretary Saeed Ahmed Khan, a former chairman of the Trading Corporation of Pakistan, is among the promoted officers.

Narcotics Control Secretary Tariq Masood Khosa, a former director general of the Federal Investigation Agency and a renowned police service officer, has also been promoted. He was the apex court’s first choice to head investigations into the Bank of Punjab scam, although the government chose someone else.

His brother, Punjab Chief Secretary Nasir Mehmood Khosa, has also been elevated to the top grade in the bureaucracy. He has also served as the chief secretary of Balochistan.

Secretary of Labour and Manpower Tariq Iqbal Puri, Secretary of Board of Investment Anisul Husnain Musavi, Additional Secretary of Ministry of Food and Agriculture Shahid Hussain Raja, Election Commission of Pakistan’s Secretary in charge Ishtiak Ahmad Khan and Chief Secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Javed Iqbal have also been promoted.

Naguibullah Malik, a friend of the prime minister who is holding the acting charge in the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications, is among those promoted. He was recently the centre of a controversy thanks to the Prime Minister’s Adviser on IT Latif Khosa who accused him of mismanagement.

All the bureaucrats promoted on Thursday had been promoted earlier by the government.

The prime minister had promoted 54 bureaucrats to grade 22 on Sept 4 last year, but the move was opposed by a battalion of officers who were not favoured.

They approached the Supreme Court which cancelled the promotions on April 27.

On Aug 16, the government amended the rules of promotion, making it possible for bureaucrats who had served only two years in grade 21 to be promoted to the next grade.

The demoted officers who have not been promoted now include several high profile names such as Principal Secretary Nargis Sethi, Sindh Chief Secretary Kamran Lashari, Federal Board of Revenue’s Chairman Sohail Ahmed, Capital Development Authority’s chief Imatiaz Inayat Elahi and Punjab police chief Tariq Saeed Dogar.

A promoted bureaucrat said there would be further reshuffles in the top hierarchy of the government because several important posts were vacant.

Another bureaucrat said most of the other officers demoted by the court would also be promoted soon.

According to sources, they had not completed two years in grade 21 by Aug 16 as required under the new rules and they are likely to be promoted on completing the period.

The secretariat group got the highest number of promotions, 23, followed by the foreign service, seven; police service, four; audit and accounts, three, and postal group and income tax, one each.

The promoted officers of the foreign service are: Khurshid Anwar, Tariq Azizuddin, Khalid Khattak, Haroon Shaukat, Zamir Akram, Jalil Abbas and Masood Khan.

Secretariat group: Tariq Iqbal, Irfan Nadeem Sayeed, Inamullah Khan, Khalid Idrees, Raja Mohammad Ikramul Haq, Athar Tahir, Shahid Hussain, Shaukat Hayat Durrani, Naguibullah Malik, Asif Bajwa, Abdul Ghaffar Soomro, Qamar Zaman, Mohammad Javed Malik, Saeed Ahmad Khan, Rukhsana Saleem, Ishtiak Ahmad, Iqbal Ahmad, Sahibzada M. Khalid, Shahid Rashid, Nasir Mahmood, Javed Iqbal, Junaid Iqbal Chaudhry and

Mohammad Abbas.

Income tax group: Anisul Husnain.

Audit and accounts service: Mohammad Ayub, Abdul Waheed Khan and Ghalibud Din.

Police service: Syed Shabbir Ahmed, Tariq Masood, Malik Mohammad Iqbal and Khalid Farooq.

Postal group: Abdul Hameed (Director General against upgraded post in BS-22).
Source: Dawn
Date:9/10/2010