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Step taken to check staff punctuality at Sindh secretariat

KARACHI: The main gates of all Sindh Secretariat buildings will be closed 30 minutes after the scheduled office timings to check punctuality of the staff at provincial government departments.

The gates will, however, be reopened at 11 a.m. for public dealing and scheduled meetings. This strategy will become effective after Ramazan.

This was decided at a meeting held under the chairmanship of Sindh Chief Secretary Mohammed Zubair Kidwai here on Saturday.

The progress of various reports of monitoring committees and their implementation also came under review.

These reports were prepared after a series of briefings with the provincial administrative departments.

The Chief Secretary called for the attainment of the targets set till June 2000.

The Chief Secretary directed all the Administrative secretaries to compile list of their respective departmental assets, also indicating the purpose of asset/building and their existing usage. He said an operating procedure in this regard be worked out in coordination with the Finance Department.

Kidwai called for adopting a criteria for transfers and postings and said that any action taken in this respect should not be arbitrary and partial.

It was decided that all departments would carry out an exercise to weed out "ghost employees" which were devouring the financial resources. Henceforth payment of salaries to all government employees of grade one and above would be made through crossed cheque drawn on nationalised scheduled banks. This banking procedure would help take action against ghost employees.

The meeting decided to prepare lists of vehicles under use of departments and their sister organisations. The Chief Secretary warned that action would be taken against all those officials using more than one official vehicle.

The meeting reviewed at length the progress of almost all the administrative department with reference to their performance and achievements.

It was decided to hold progress review meetings every fortnight to help achieve the targets within the stipulated time.

The meeting was informed that a trauma centre, established at the Civil Hospital, Karachi has been pushed into cold storage. The Chief Secretary directed immediate reactivation of the centre after proper inquiry. APP