Eleven Federal Secretaries reshuffled

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, in a dramatic development on Friday night shook the powerful bureaucracy first time since he assumed his office in March last year, issued notification reshuffling eleven federal secretaries.

Gilani transferred and posted about 11 federal secretaries of BPS-22 with just one stroke of pen but surprisingly a couple of names recommended by the Presidency have simply been found missing from this list.

According to notification, Ismail Qureshi was appointed as Secretary Establishment, Abdul Rauf Chaudhry as Secretary Education, Sabteen Fazal Haleem as Secretary Health, and Zafar Mehmood was appointed as Secretary Cabinet Division.

Like wise, GM Sikandar was designated as Secretary Housing, Salman Ghani as Secretary Commerce, Mirza Karim Baig as Secretary Trade Development Authority, Sami Khilji as Railway, Kashif Murtaza as Science and Technology while Ashraf Hayat was appointed as Secretary Planning.

Tariq Pur was made Additional Secretary In-charge of Investment while Tariq Pervez was designated as National Coordinator of Counter Terrorism Authority.

The federal ministries, whose secretaries were transferred, were caught off guard, as they too came to know about these dramatic changes like the rest of Pakistan when this correspondent broke this news on Geo News.

The “merit, honesty and ” is said to have been the main consideration of Prime Minister Gilani to make these transfers and postings in the federal bureaucracy.

A top level source confirmed to Geo News that the liking and disliking of the federal ministries were not taken into consideration at the time of these changes as Gilani decided to take this decision on his own to assert his authority which many believed was undermined by many powerful ministers of his cabinet who were not taking him seriously.

But the most important post of principal secretary to the prime minister has not been filled as it is believed that Gilani is yet to find a suitable bureaucrat for this post which might actually help him to tighten his grip over the federal bureaucracy in the fast changing political situation in the country.

Prime minister’s refusal to appoint K B Rind as new cabinet secretary is being given an importance because the Presidency was said to be in favour of his appointment. The omission of Rind from the list gives a clear indication that PM Gilani had tried to bring the people of his own choice.