Rotation Policy 2019 in the making

ISLAMABAD: Failures after failures of successive governments to implement inter-provincial transfer policy in the case of Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) and Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) officials, the PTI government is now finally in a process of formulating new “Rotation Policy 2019” in consultation with the provinces to ensure that no exception is created while reshuffling the PAS and PSP officers between provinces and the Centre.

Now the PTI government, which too has made an attempt to rotate the PAS and PSP officers on merit but failed, is linking the promotion of the officers belonging to these services with relevant provisions of the draft Rotation Policy 2019.

The draft “Rotation Policy 2019” for All Pakistan Services’ (PAS and PSP) officers was circulated recently to all the provincial governments for their input and now based on the comments of the provinces the draft policy will be forwarded to Prime Minister Imran Khan for approval and implementation.

The government resolves, “Rotation Policy 2000 shall be replaced with Rotation Policy 2019 under the Civil Servants Act 1973. Subject to a consensus among all stakeholders this policy may be upgraded to Rotation Rules 2019 so that rotation of officers among various governments becomes an unavoidable undertaking in which creation of exceptions becomes impossible.”

The draft “Rotation Policy 2019” as shared with the provinces promises, “Relevant provisions of this Policy are being made part of eligibility conditions of PAS/PSP officers’ consideration for promotion to BS-19 and BS-21.”

Under the proposed policy, the first allocation of every PAS/PSP officer shall invariably be made outside the province of his/her domicile where he/she shall be required to serve until his promotion to BS-18 or for five years starting from the date he/she joins the provincial government/ICT as AC(under training)/ASP(under training). ICT shall be considered part of the province of Punjab for the officers having Islamabad’s domicile.

The draft policy says that no transfer of any officer on any ground to any provincial government/ICT shall be allowed until his/her promotion or completion of 5 years, whichever is earlier.

It adds that no PAS/PSP officer of BS-20 and below shall be allowed to serve in a provincial or federal government continuously for more than 10 years. Officers who have served in any provincial government or the federal government for a continuous period of not less than 10 years shall be transferred to the federal government or other provinces, as the case may be, in public interest. There placements shall be made on the principle of least rotated transferred first, to serve in the government with the highest shortage ratio.

Once an officer has been thus compulsorily rotated, he/she shall not return to the government of his/her previous ten-year posting, before completing two years at stations of his/her posting situated outside of the geographical limits of government of his/her ten-year posting. The officers who have served continuously for 10 years or more in the governments shall be relocated to other governments by 30th June 2019.

For the purpose of eligibility to promotion to BS-19, a service of at least 5 years out of the province of domicile shall be compulsory for every officer. This condition, however, shall be applicable on the batches who are inducted in PAS/PSP through CSS examination after notification of these policy provisions.

An officer shall not be considered eligible for promotion to BS-21 by a Central Selection Board if he/she was serving in a government continuously for more than 10 years until he/she has been transferred out of that government and has served at least one year in another government outside the geographical limits of the government of 10 or more years stay.

Officers serving in a government continuously for 10 years shall not be eligible for nomination to mandatory trainings, foreign trainings, study leave, extraordinary leave and long leave unless their continuous stay in a particular province is broken as per the policy.

Wedlock policy shall not apply to PAS/PSP officers in relaxation of Rotation Policy. Instead spouses of these officers shall be posted closest to the places of posting of PAS/PSP officers and not vice versa. In cases where both the spouses are from PAS/PSP, the spouse from comparatively low shortage government shall be offered to be transferred to the other spouse’s government of posting.

The objectives of the policy besides others include to ensure that no province to be serviced by the PAS/PSP cadres remains starved of these officers in various grades; onus to serve in all the governments on sanctioned posts is equitably shared by the officers of these services; the tendency of some officers to stick to one province for years together by bringing extraneous pressures is checked and curbed; each province is able to avail services of PAS/PSP officers with carrying seniority, experience and expertise in various fields of administration against sanctioned posts.