Interview with Dr. Ishrat Hussain

In the current system, there are two issues: one is that the Constitution under Article 240 provides three types of civil services: All Pakistan, federal, and provincial civil service. The provincial civil service is 4 times larger than the federal civil service. Second, under the shared positions of All Pakistan services, more than 1700 were reserved for Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) officers. Out of these, 650 posts have been taken away from PAS and allocated to the members of the provincial civil services. It has also been decided to induct Provincial Civil Service officers into the Pakistan Administrative Service through the FPSC. Thus, the dominance of the All Pakistan Services would be diluted to some extent. If the interpretation of Article 240 in the constitution of Pakistan is clarified by the Supreme Court and it orders that All Pakistan Services should be abolished, the PAS and Police Service of Pakistan would become Federal cadres with no representation at the provincial level. . In my personal view this would not be a forward looking step as we need intimate knowledge of local and provincial problems for decision making at the Federal level. There should also be a new cadre i.e. District Service in addition to the provincial service because most of the interaction between the common citizen and the Government takes place at the local level.