The bill to amend the Civil Service Act, 1992, has been pending in parliament for eight months. The debate on the bill has dragged on, but a conclusion has yet to be reached. This created several practical difficulties, affecting governance. On Sunday, too, MPs deliberated on it in the newly formed administrative reforms committee. Some of them argued that as the country was certain to embrace a federal system of governance, the old amendment bill should be passed only after incorporating the changes in line with the federal system. At the same time, there is pressure especially from the civil servants’ unions to pass the legislation without further delay. The automatic promotion system explains their hurry. The differences over promotion and introduction of levels in the existing classes of the civil service hierarchy have delayed the amendment.

Employees will get immediate promotion if they have put in 16 years of service (provided they possess the minimum academic qualifications for the next higher level) and 20 years if they lack these. This provision applies to the non-gazetted second class to section officers. As soon as this comes into force, around 32,000 civil servants will be automatically promoted, thus destroying the concept of merit-based reward system. Though the government claims the provision will make the promotion system “more equitable”, it will affect service delivery and waste the taxpayers’ money. Promotion should be awarded only to the deserving. This ‘automatic’ innovation will strike at the root of good governance. Many of those unfit for continuance in government services would be promoted. Poor delivery of the government’s services has a lot to do with the faulty system that does not link rewards to performance.

Much will not be left for the Public Service Commission to do with regard to promotion if the bill is passed, as its chairman and members rightly said in the State Affairs Committee on November 30 last year. The equity principle claim cannot stand scrutiny, as, then, the question would also arise why it should not be applied to the under-secretaries and above. But the civil service and the public should not be put in a prolonged state of uncertainty, which has affected the promotion and hiring process of the government, as well as certain other aspects. After the lapse of the royal ordinance that did away with, for instance, the pension system for the government employees, introducing instead the gratuity provision, the 1992 Act has come to life again, along with all its clauses, including the pension system. The interim government and the parliament should come clear on all these questions. Delay of another sort is also feared in light of some MPs’ contention that a federal-based amendment should be introduced beforehand. It is impossible to make the law on a structure without any definite features before it comes into existence. The law can be amended at any time according to need. But the government must end the uncertainty and confusion.