PESHAWAR: Provincial Civil Service (PCS) Officers Association, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, on Wednesday warned that if their issues were not resolved they would go on a pen-down strike across the province from next week.

A statement issued here said that the PCS officers met at the Civil Secretariat and discussed the issue of PCS officers` promotion in relation to the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) and their other demands.

The PCS of ficers have been demanding better career progression vis-à-vis PAS officers and opposing 1993 jobs apportionment formula for the posts of BPS-17 to BPS-22 and retrenchment of scheduled posts.

They say that the formula favours the PAS officers who despite being fewer in number get the most of the lucrative postings in the province.

As the rank goes up the PAS officers get most of the posts, while at lower level most of the posts go to the PCSofficers.

The statement said that the officers noted that the matter of the PCS officers in relation to PAS was yet to be decided by the provincial assembly.

`About 600 PCS officers were assured of solution of their problems by the KP Assembly Speaker and other parliamentary leaders and asl
The statement said that the matter hadbeenkeptpendingforthelastfour months on the pretext of it being sub judice since 2010. It claimed that there were no restraining orders from the Supreme Court, hence no bar on the assembly to take up the issue. Even the federal government has not been stopped from recruitment and promotions, it said.

The statement said that the provincial assembly was the sole custodian of Provincial Civil Service and it could not abdicate its constitutional responsibility to provide justice to the PCS officers.

It was observed that hurdles were being created in finalisation of the matter by the technical members of the committee as they got instructions from the chief secretary who himself was a party being PAS officer.

`It was unanimously decided that if the matter is not resolved this week, the 600 PCS officers would resort to a pen-down strike across the provinceand Fata next week,` the statement said.

It said that the meeting also discussed issues related to accountability and the association said that they supported the government`s campaign against corruption.

However, it added that all the officers and even assembly members realized that the Ehtisab Act had anomalies, which led to harassment of the officers and resulted in impeding almost all financial operations of the government.

A cabinet committee was constituted to remove anomalies from this Act, but it is yet to present its report.

The PCS Officers Association has already submitted its working paper regarding the Ehtisab Act to the committee.

It said that civil service reforms were also discussed and the PCS Officers Association had constituted a committee to review the structure, recruitment, posting, promotion and salaries/incentives of the PCS officers.

It said that the association`s committee would soon submit a white paper on Civil Service Reforms to the Establishment Department and provincial assembly.

Earlier, the provincial bureaucracy had gone on a pen-down strike in August, which it ended following negotiations with the chief secretary.