LAHORE - In view of the reports about placement of post of Assistant Commissioner in grade 18 for PCS officers and in grade 17 for DMG officers under the proposed District Administration, Provincial Civil Service (PCS) Officers Association Punjab organised an emergency meeting in City on Sunday, which was attended by all PMS and PCS officers from all over the province. The meeting expressed grave concerns over the report move on the part of DMG dominated S&GAD to appoint PCS officers of grade 18 as Assistant Commissioner. It was observed that PCS officers had to spend more than 17 years to get promotion to grade 18. It would be gross injustice to equate PCS officers of grade 18 having 17 to 22 years of experience and a grade 17 DMG officers with zero experience. It was resolved that this move would not be acceptable to PCS and PMS officers of the Punjab and every means of protest would be adopted to stop this injustice. It was further observed that when the Devolution Plan was introduced, the DMG officers got promotions on a large scale against the newly created posts. While PCS officers were denied promotion on one pretext or the other. In order to deny promotion to PCS officers, discriminatory regulations of mandatory raining and mandatory stay in each grade were promulgated for the PCS officers. There is no condition of training for promotion to grade 18 for officers of DMG and other Federal Service Groups. Since arrangement of training courses and nomination to these courses is under the control of DMG officers, they are using this leverage to deprive the PCS officers of promotion to higher grades. The result has been that 27 posts of PCS quota in grade 20 and 8 in grade 21 are lying vacant only because the PCS officers are not being given opportunity of training. The meeting cited the example of the current batch of officers undergoing training at NIPA for grade 20. Against 27 vacant posts of PCS quota, only one PCS officer namely Babar Shafi was getting training. In the year 2010, four PCS officers of grade 20 will retire while only one or two officers will be eligible for promotion to grade 20. Thus number of PCS officers in grade 20 will further be reduced. Likewise, the condition of mandatory stay in each grade has been prescribed for the PCS officers while the DMG officers and even the PCS officers of other provinces are exempt from such an arbitrary condition. This condition is discriminatory keeping in view the long period of 17 to 2o years that a PCS officer has to spend only in grade 17. The meeting reviewed efforts of PCS Officers Association to get appointment from the Chief Secretary Punjab to apprise him of their problems. It was noted that during the past one and half year, the Chief Secretary had not given any appointment to the Association despite repeated requests. It was therefore decided that if the demands of the PCS officers conveyed through media were not met within a week, a vigorous protest movement would be launched from 3rd January from Press Club where the PCS and PMS officers will gather at 1:00pm. Future plan of protest would also be announced on the first day of protest.