Daily Times

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Finance Minister Muzaffar Said has said that government employees envisaged the status of backbone in the government machinery and hence provincial government was making all out efforts for their welfare.

He assured that the long-standing demand of 30% special allowance for secretariat employees would be sorted out accordingly. However, he asked them to discharge their duties of public service devotedly to restore confidence of the people in institutions that was bitterly shattered in the past.

He was talking to the delegation of Secretariat Employee Coordination Council led by Muhammad Tariq at Civil Secretariat Peshawar that requested the Minister to unfreeze their special secretariat allowance on pattern of provincial assembly and judicatory.The Finance Minister said further asked the employees to inculcate the spirit of professionalism in their duties and discharge it with 100% accuracy and precision so that the task of public service delivery could be cherished in befitting manner.

He said our present coalition govt. depoliticized and strengthened the departments as he said only strong and stable institutions could deliver to public in better and satisfactory way. Similarly, he said supremacy of law and merit was also ensured menaces of nepotism and embezzlement from the government machinery.

He deplored that shirk of work and corruption was routine practice in the past but the present govt. has zero tolerance for it so all kinds of malpractices especially corruption in the officialdom would never be allowed at any cost. He said that we all were in fact public servants and quite accountable to the people as we all were being paid from the hard-earned money of the masses who mostly belong to the poor segments of the society. Hence, he said serving the masses round the clock and endeavoring for ameliorating lot of the common man must be our joint goal.

He recalled that the present govt; has expedited the process of the promotion and up gradation of the govt. employees so that they could be given maximum relief to enable them to serve with satisfaction of mind.

Muzaffar Said Advocate said that his govt. was quite abreast with problems and grievances of the govt. employees and that were being solved on priority basis. He reiterated pledge of KP govt. to enhance the salaries of govt. employees many fold like that in the developed countries.

However, he said meager resources of the govt. was main hurdle in this respect but the govt. was sure that all such financial crunch would also be resolved with the passage of time and the pace of progress and prosperity would be accelerated in the province.

He said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government was in serious dialogue with center to increase our shares as per constitutional obligation and the federal government has realized our compulsions including the extra burdens in backdrop of prolong stay of millions of Afghan refugees, IDP’s and heavy damages to our infrastructure due to terrorism and natural disasters besides outstanding security expenditures due to terror factors.