CSS Exam In Pakistan To Address Vacant Minority And Women Quotas
In a groundbreaking development in Pakistan, a special Central Superior Service (CSS) examination is set to take place to fill long-vacant seats reserved for members of minority communities and women.
The CSS examination is scheduled to commence on October 12 this year, following a preliminary screening test that has already been conducted, according to an official from the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC).
Despite candidates from minority communities and women participating in previous exams, the reserved seats for these quotas have largely remained unfilled. In the case of minorities, insufficient candidates would appear for the exams, resulting in only one to three posts being filled against the minority quota. Seats allocated for the Punjab region often remained vacant.
On the other hand, women candidates in the CSS exams often demonstrated excellent performance and could compete on open merit. However, the overall number of passing female candidates was not sufficient to meet the reserved quota.
Currently, women are allotted a 10 percent quota in the CSS exam, while minority communities have a 5 percent quota. It’s worth noting that while the quotas have been enshrined in the Constitution since 1973, the necessary rules and procedures were not put in place until about 15 years ago. Quotas for women were introduced in 2007, and those for minorities followed in 2009, but the seats against these quotas have remained largely unoccupied.
A significant step toward addressing this issue occurred in 2022 when Dr. Shoaib Suddle, the head of the National Commission for Minorities, initiated a census of vacant posts reserved for minorities at the federal and provincial levels.
Dr. Suddle instructed the Establishment Secretary to provide information about vacant slots at the federal level and directed chief secretaries in the provinces to do the same. The findings were astonishing, even for Dr. Suddle, a respected retired police officer.
It was revealed that 95 percent of jobs designated for minorities had been allocated to Christians, often limited to roles as sweepers and janitors. More than 33,000 vacant posts, ranging from grade 1 to grade 17, designated for minorities had remained unoccupied for years, with little effort made to fill them, despite a large pool of unemployed youth in the country.
In response to these findings, Dr. Suddle, whose commission had previously made commendable efforts to eliminate hate against minorities from educational curricula and recover occupied lands of the Evacuee Trust Property Board worth billions, decided to take action to ensure minorities received their fair share of job opportunities.
He directed the FPSC and provincial commissions to fill the vacant slots through competitive exams and extended this directive to autonomous institutions with quotas for minorities.
The FPSC went even further by including women in the effort to fill seats against the reserved quota. As a result, online applications were invited, attracting 34,334 candidates, of which 21,920 passed the screening test. This figure also included seats reserved for various provinces.
Among the successful candidates, 1,263 were from minority communities, and 7,510 were women who cleared the screening test. Additionally, 14,410 candidates who applied for quotas from different provinces qualified for the upcoming written examination, scheduled for the next month.
Astonishingly, approximately 61 percent of the gazetted seats reserved for minorities in Punjab remain unfilled, as indicated by data from the Punjab Public Service Commission.
The Punjab Public Service Commission has urged provincial secretaries to expedite the filling of these vacant posts. Further analysis reveals that the majority of unfilled positions reserved for minorities in Punjab are in the Higher Education sector, with 76 out of 122 posts vacant.
Police positions follow, with 56 out of 83 posts remaining unfilled, and the Primary & Secondary Healthcare sector is third, with 45 out of 73 slots still vacant. In total, Punjab has 423 gazetted posts allocated for minorities, with 259 of them currently vacant.