Top bureaucrat promises ‘transparent’ implementation

QUETTA: Balochistan’s top bureaucrat has directed secretaries of provincial departments to complete the recruitment process in their respective departments before June, this year.

While presiding over a meeting of provincial secretaries in Quetta on Wednesday, Chief Secretary Ahmed Bakhsh Lehri also held out an assurance that the Aghaz-e-Haquq-e Balochistan Package would be implemented which, he hoped, would alleviate unemployment in the province. The package envisages more government jobs for Baloch youth.

The chief secretary directed that vacant posts in provincial departments must be properly advertised in national newspapers. In the first phase, interviews would be conducted on May 22 at offices of deputy commissioners in all districts for 5,000 vacant posts throughout the province. The government has formed committees to oversee the recruitment process and ensure transparency. Administrative secretaries will be heading these committees.

The meeting was informed that 5,000 people would be appointed on a contract basis in Grade 11 to 16 for a four-year period and the federal government would pay their salaries. After the successful completion of the contract period, their services would be transferred to the provincial government. Officials told The Express Tribune that the government had sent a summary for 9,000 new jobs. However, the numbers were reduced due to lack of space. The government has announced the Aghaz-e-Haquq-e- Balochistan Package to address the sense of deprivation among the people of Balochistan, which despite being the largest province is the most underdeveloped.

All major Baloch nationalist parties have rejected the package, saying that giving government jobs to “a few Baloch youth” could not make amends for “injustices” done to the people of the province over the last 60 years. Minister for Power and Irrigation Sardar Aslam Bizenjo says that the president and the prime minster had promised that Baloch youths would be given jobs in PIA, Customs, Income Tax, Pakistan Railways and other federal corporations.

“But contrary to this appointments are being made only in the education department,” he told The Express Tribune. “This package is just an eyewash. It is a mere joke with the people of Balochistan,” he said, adding that if the federal government had given federal jobs on a quota system, then nobody would have been jobless in Balochistan.

“In the past, bureaucrats hailing from other provinces made fake local domiciles for their relatives. And they were recruited in federal departments on the Balochistan quota,” said Bizenjo. He regretted that the policy has not changed.

Published in the Express Tribune, May 13th, 2010.