Punjab Public Service Commission: Dept to hire 4,500 lecturers on its own

HEC to carry out recruitment itself; official says commission lacks capacity, transparency.

LAHORE: The Higher Education Department (HED) has decided to recruit 4,500 lecturers in BS-17 itself rather than through the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) because it does not believe that the commission is up to the task, The Express Tribune has learnt.

An HED official said that the PPSC could not meet the urgent need to fill around 4,500 posts of lecturers in various subjects because it was too slow, lacked capacity and did not have a transparent system of recruitment. “So the HED has decided to recruit to vacant posts by itself,” he said.

The official said that the department had been let down by the commission the last time it made recruitments through it. In June 2010, the HED asked the PPSC to seek applications and conduct interviews for around 1,400 posts of assistant professor in Punjab. But the interviews conducted by the PPSC’s panels have been challenged in the Lahore High Court as lacking credibility and violating merit.

He said that the department had decided to relax the recruitment rules and had informed the PPSC of its decision. He said that the HED would advertise the vacant lecturer posts in all public sector colleges and conduct their written examination through the National Testing Services (NTS).

The official said that the PPSC had reacted disapprovingly to the HED’s proposal and had sought to take part in the recruitment process. He said the commission had proposed that the department conduct the written tests and then compile a shortlist of candidates. The commission would then interview the people on the list, which would have five candidates for each post, he said.

He said that the department did not want this and was concerned as to why the commission wanted to conduct the final interviews. “The PPSC’s credibility in conducting the final interviews of candidates for assistant professor has been challenged in the LHC.”

In 2007, the LHC relaxed the Punjab Judicial Services Rules 1994 and itself recruited 100 civil judges. It again relaxed the rules in 2010 and recruited 226 civil judges. Civil judges or judicial magistrates were supposed to be recruited by the PPSC, but the commission was slow in hiring the required number of judges, and the LHC eventually withdrew the commission’s powers to fill these positions.

Mushtaq Mohal, former legal director of the PPSC, said the latest development showed that government departments were not satisfied with the commission and thought it lacked credibility.

PPSC officials refused to comment, saying they were not allowed to speak to the media.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 22^nd, 2011.