Employees of 121 ex-FATA projects to be regularised

A committee constituted by the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on the erstwhile FATA Project Employees’ Regularization Bill 2021 has decided to regularize the employees of 121 projects in the merged districts.

Regarding the employees of the remaining 32 projects which were out of the regularization process, orders were issued to the Establishment Department to submit a report to the committee within 60 days about them.

All the other project employees posted in the merged districts, who meet the bill’s parameters, will also be regularized via amendments in the bill.

In this regard a meeting of the committee on Federally Administered Tribal Areas Project Employees Regularization Bill 2021 was held at the Assembly Conference Hall Peshawar on Tuesday. Provincial Minister for Labour, Culture and Parliamentary Affairs Shaukat Yousafzai presided over the meeting.

The meeting agreed with the recommendation to immediately regularize employees of around 121 projects, and to table the proposal in the next assembly session. Members of the Provincial Assembly Naeema Kishwar, Inayatullah, Nisar Ahmed, Sardar Khan, Syed Ghazi Ghazan Jamal, Shagufta Malik, Rehana Ismail, Waqar Ahmed, Baserat Khan, Pir Fida Mohammad, Bahadar Khan, Rangiz Ahmed, Shafiq Sher Afridi. Munawar Khan, Ikhtiar Wali, Humayun Khan, Mir Kalam Wazir, Khushdil Khan, Musawar Khan and Syed Fakhar Jahan also attended the meeting along with the special and additional secretaries of establishment department, advocate general and additional advocate general and representatives of law department.

On the occasion chairman of the committee Shaukat Yousafzai said that the present government is working to bring all the merged districts on a par with the settled districts of the province and country as per the vision and wishes of Prime Minister Imran Khan and Chief Minister Mahmood Khan. He said that a new era of development and prosperity has begun in the tribal districts. Yousafzai said that the provincial government is committed to ensuring provision of all basic facilities, education, health and employment opportunities in all the merged districts.

He said that the employees of 121 projects would be regularized in the first phase and 32 other projects would be covered later and no employee would be left without regularization.

It worth mentioning here that there are 3,449 employees in the 121 projects and the employees were demanding of the government to pass the regularization bill from the provincial assembly as soon as possible. The employees of these projects had warned of a protest demonstration outside the provincial assembly on December 6 but then postponed it after negotiations with district administration.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29^th, 2021.