CT Newsroom
The federal government on Monday decided to implement civil service reforms similar to those proposed by the Pakistan Tehreek e-Insaf (PTI) government.
As per details, the federal government had decided to introduce civil service reforms and set up a civil service reform committee to introduce reforms after a thorough evaluation. The committee was led by Ahsan Iqbal.
The proposed reforms by the committee were reportedly similar to those introduced by the Imran Khan government after two years of consultations.
Khan’s government had established a special Task Force for Civil Service Reforms. After two years of consultations, the task force completed its comprehensive set of recommendations for modernizing the civil service structure, processes, and incentives, holding 68 sessions with more than 3,000 participants from different walks of life.
Dr Ishrat Husain led the Task Force on Civil Service Reform. Initially, the Task Force proposed the reconstruction of the Central Superior Services (CSS) competitive examination by introducing preliminary screening tests, domain-specific cluster-based exam, psychometric evaluations, structured interviews, and system automation.
Afterward, recommendations were made regarding the reconstruction of specialized training institutes and mandatory training for ex-cadre and non-cadre civil servants.
For this purpose, it was proposed to replace the subjective ACR system with an objective PER with goals specified and key performance indicators.
The old system of seniority-cum fitness was replaced by a quantitative evaluation of each candidate’s performance.
The Task Force also proposed a new training scheme for civil servants. However, the proposal regarding the re-organization of specialized training institutes and mandatory training for ex-cadre and non-cadre civil servants was not implemented.
Mandatory retirement of non-performers after 20 years of service was introduced. Later on, this reform was changed by PDM.
It was also recommended that annual increments should be based on ratings in performance evaluation.
It is worth mentioning that most of the reforms introduced by the Task Force were approved by Khan’s cabinet but remained unimplemented. All the major reforms introduced by the PTI government to cleanse the bureaucracy were later revised by the last Pakistan Democratic Movement PDM government and now restored by the current government.
