ISLAMABAD - Establishment Division here on Wednesday suspended Anita Turab, a District Management Group (DMG) officer and recently serving as director National Counter-terrorism Authority (NACTA), from service for levelling accusations against government machinery.
The Establishment Division also formally issued a notification in this regard.
Turab had recently written a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Fakhruddin G Ibrahim asking him that since the incumbent PPP-led federal government had started wide-scale recruitments as part of its next general election campaign, so the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) should order banning fresh recruitments in all provincial and federal government departments on temporary as well as permanent basis.
She in the letter addressed to CEC had said that all appointments in the government departments should not be made on a political basis prior to an election.
She in the letter said that the federal government has advertised in the press to fill thousands of vacant posts in government ministries and attached departments. “8,816 such vacancies in the Ministry of Interior and its attached departments had been advertised by the federal government,” said the letter adding that the government continued banning all fresh appointments during the last five years due to financial constraints. She said that it would be unethical that government would hire people by using taxpayers’ money for its own political purposes as part of the election campaign.
Turab viewed in the letter that the government employees should be hired on merit in order to maintain minimum standards of good governance. Other wise, the functioning of the government departments and the quality of civil service would be compromised.
Anita Turab also remain in the stories of the press some time ago when he had approached the Supreme Court of Pakistan to depoliticise the civil bureaucracy as a protest on an incident of PPP candidate Waheeda Shah slapping a polling officer during a by-election of Sindh provincial assembly in Tando Mohammad Khan last year. She had filed an application before SC seeking suo motu notice and drew the attention of the court to the lack of job security for civil servants. 
The court took the suo motu notice and issued a detailed judgement on her application and directed the government to ensure the tenure of the civil servants and there should be solid reasons of any transfer of a civil servant prior to the completion of his tenure.
The three member bench of the apex court ruled that civil servants were not bound to obey illegal orders of their superiors because at first they had taken oath of allegiance to the law and the Constitution.