‘Rules are meant to be broken’: Illegally promoted BECS employees continue unaffected

AGP, others ruled the promotions illegal but NEF has ignored them.

ISLAMABAD:

A number of illegal promotions made in the Basic Education Community Schools (BECS) project have not been reversed despite objections from the Auditor General's (AG) office.

BECS functions under the National Education Foundation (NEF) and sources from the foundation said that a number of assistant directors and lower-grade employees were promoted to the next grade unilaterally by the project director without the consent of the then NEF managing director or the chairman of the foundation.

The outgoing managing director did reverse the illegal promotions of the same group on the advice of the then Federal Audit Director General Gulzar Husnain with the approval of the Planning Commission deputy chairman in June 2011. However, a group of officials affected by this action have blocked the orders of the competent authority and are still enjoying their illegal positions.

The auditor general’s office strongly objected to the illegal promotions on the ground that BECS is a temporary project and its employees are recruited purely on contract basis, making any promotions in such a project illegal.

The sources said that DG Federal Audit Syed Gulzar Husnain personally visited the NEF head office in Islamabad some eight months back and pointed out the irregularities. He made it clear that under no rule any project official could be promoted to the next grade. On the audit observation, the then NEF MD issued notifications to all the promoted officers and directed them to consider their promotions null and void as the project director had done it illegally.

In separate letters issued on June 14, 2011, the MD had stated, “Contract employees of the BECS project were illegally promoted...as pointed out by Federal Audit DG,” and that they stand “hereby demoted to their original rank with immediate effect...”.

The officials who were illegally promoted to the next grade include Sadia Atta Ghuman and Abdul Hanan, who were promoted to the post of deputy director from assistant director. Similarly, Muhammad Noor and Fariduddin were promoted as assistant director, Asif Majeed and Wali Muhammad as assistant field officers and a number of other lower grade officials.

An official in the NEF said that this is an example of how a group of temporary employees is playing to the gallery to extract their pound of flesh by cashing on the poor BECS students. A Rs7 billion project designed to provide basic education facilities to poor children has been marred by mismanagement and nepotism and has failed to achieve any of its targets, he added. Similarly, another official added that this project is a perfect den to gain personal benefits in the shape of illegal promotions, work-free salaries, spurious medical and house claims and TA/DA bills.

A recent NEF Punjab Chapter audit report bears witness to financial bungling of millions of rupees regarding POL and other fake expenses including bogus payments of teachers’ salaries.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th, 2012.