Governor Sindh ratifies Removal from Service Ordinance Repeal bill

KARACHI: Governor Sindh Muhammad Zubair Umar on Friday ratified the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP)’s Removal from Service Ordinance (RSO) 2000 Repeal bill, ARY News reported.

Following the Sindh Governor’s approval, the bill has replaced Musharraf-era law ‘Removal from Service Ordinance (RSO) 2000’ from the province.

According to the new law, government employees will be asked to present their stance before being removed from any post when accused of irregularities.

The government in the centre and other provincial governments have already revoked the same ordinance.

Interestingly, the PPP that abolished the law from the federal level in 2010 did not revoke it from Sindh and wanted to keep some one million employees of the Sindh government under the sword of this law, depriving the government employees of an opportunity to communicate their point of view.

However, Advocate General of Sindh Zameer Ghumro in a letter to Federal Government had urged revocation of the RSO 2000 by adopting a stance that the sword of RSO 2000 dangles on around one million government employees in Sindh. Hence, the law should be revoked.

He further highlighted that all other three provincial governments had repealed the bill years ago introduced by former President General Pervez Musharraf.

It merits to mention here that the law came into force in 2000 when Musharraf revoked service rules ‘Civil Servants Rules (Efficiency and Discipline E&D Act 1973)’.

The RSO 2000 aimed to grant special powers to higher authorities of the government to punish and terminate services of the civil servants without giving them legitimate opportunity of defence.

In Musharraf era, all political leadership including the PPP leader Benazir Bhutto had termed this a draconian law but surprisingly the party that won the majority of seats in the assembly failed to take steps for abolition of the law from Sindh.