Blue-eyed boys?: Staffers challenge political appointments in FIA, NADRA, police

Court asks for report on who was given a government job and in which department.

KARACHI: Over a dozen employees of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) have challenged in court jobs given to close relatives of Sindh ministers, ruling party leaders in NADRA, Customs, the FIA and the police by bypassing the testing body.

On Monday, a division bench of the Sindh High Court heard the petition filed by Anwar and 14 others and issued notices for explanations to both the federal and provincial governments for March 2.

The court also restrained the departments mentioned in the petition from taking any action against the petitioners.

The petitioners maintain that appointments to gazetted posts from grade 17 onwards, with 22 being the highest, could only be made through service commissions. In this case, the government violated all rules, regulations and procedures and appointed a selected few after bypassing the service commissions. This deprived thousands of candidates of a chance to get a government job on the basis of merit.

The only qualification these 100 or more people possessed was their relation to the men who call themselves legislators and claim to be democrats and representative of the people, argued the petitioners.

They allege that injustice, favourtism and a violation of all government rules and regulations has taken place.

After hearing the initial arguments by the petitioners’ lawyer M Aqil Awan, the court ordered the people named in the petition to come up with a detailed report on how many people have been appointed at what post and in which department.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2012.