Not sure if this will help you.. my friend who's in civil service started off at grade 14 as per all fresh grads and made it to 11 in 6 years... although he's a scholar and i saw the first 2-3 years was damn siong for him.. work until 11pm for long periods.. those that made grade 11 with him are all scholars... so there are peers who are non-scholars get stuck in grade 12... usually non-scholars CEP is lower so their promotion rate is slower.. from what i know.. a deputy director in a ministry is grade 9... so there's actually not much room to climb in terms of grade...but the salary range is wide...so there's plenty of room for annual increments... the good thing for scholars is that they get rotated around and hold other titles or appointments which may not involve promotion in grade so their career seems to be "moving".. non scholars do not get such opportunities so it would seem like you are stuck in a dead-end job etc..

that said.. the general promotion criteria involves duration in a grade.. whether or not you've hit salary range ceiling as well as past and current performance grade.. there's a minimum you have to accumulate over the years plus in the current year if you are to be promoted.. you cannot have a grading lower than the threshold that your ministry sets... maybe C+ or B- I dunno.. i think its highly likely that you may have tio-ed a poor grade which has severely affected your promotion chances.. your bosses likely see no need to push/fight for you.. normally a lot of paper work has to be put in to "fire" someone so normally what happens is they wait for the guy to leave on his own...