In times of unemployment, excise dept recruitment lags behind

Govt’s approval of hiring will be cancelled after completion of current FY on June 30

LAHORE: The recruitment of 168 educated youngsters in excise department service centers has been delayed due to the reportedly lackadaisical attitude of four other departments of the provincial government.  These centres were established to provide state-of-the-art facilities across six cities.

As a result, the project may even be cancelled as this year comes to an end.

Despite requests being issued in writing by the excise department over the last two months, the finance, planning and development, regulation and service departments have not nominated their representatives for the committee that decides new appointments for service centres.

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The government decided to establish excise service centers in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Multan and Bahawalpur, last year. For this purpose, buildings on four sites in Lahore and another one in the city was rented and renovated. Under the project, young educated men and women were to be appointment after recruitment on these service centers instead of current excise staff.

The excise department gave the contract of the project to a private testing company for recruitment. However, reports of serious misconduct during written examinations emerged and the recruitment process was delayed for several weeks.

After this, the private company issued the list of candidates who passed the written test to the excise department but at the time, the government had already banned new recruitments.

After a period of three months, the excise department sent a summary to the Punjab chief minister to complete the recruitment process. However, the planning and development department concluded those conditions do not apply on this project.

Earlier, the CM secretariat reduced the number of job vacancies to 168. A committee consisting of representatives of the excise department, finance department, planning and development department, regulation department and service department then decided to finalise interviews, the recruitment process and other decisions.

Several weeks later, officials of the excise department issued multiple requests in written to the high officials of the other four departments to nominate their representatives for the committee so that a meeting of the committee could be held. However, none of the four departments nominated their representatives. This approval by the provincial government will be cancelled after the completion of the financial year on June 30, 2019.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 15^th, 2019.