Mass communication vacancies: Without announcing results of previous interview, govt re-advertises vacant posts

Sindh information department held the interviews on an earlier ad on Nov 5.

HYDERABAD: A recent vacancy advertisement of the Sindh government has stirred up the graduates of mass communication in the province. With their job prospects in government services already limited to only information departments and public relations offices, they worry a further contraction.

In October and then again in November, the Sindh Information and Archives Department advertised 30 contract positions for BPS-17 information officers - 18 for rural and 12 for urban Sindh. However, both the job announcements varied. The earlier one required a mass communication qualification as the eligibility criteria but the latter expanded it to cover social sciences also. The Sindh Public Service Commission (SPSC), which usually conducts the written tests and interviews for appointments to gazetted posts, was also not involved in the process.

Against the earlier advertisement, the information department held the walk-in-interviews on November 5 in Karachi. More than 200 candidates from across Sindh were interviewed but the results were not announced, official sources say. Later, the same positions were again advertised on November 22 with interviews planned for December 10.

Hidayatullah Qureshi, a University of Sindh graduate who lives in Dadu, was among around 50 other mass communication graduates and few teachers, who gathered at the press club on Saturday to protest. They slammed the government on two accounts - cancelling their interview results and including around two dozen more subjects in the posts’ eligibility criteria.

It’s strange that graduates of commerce, philosophy, business administration, general history, international relations, sociology or criminology can apply for these posts, another graduate Asma Zulfiqar commented. “Such disregard for professional qualifications is affecting the government performance,” she argued.



The protesters asserted that mass communication or journalism graduates should be considered for the posts of public relations officers or information officers. These jobs are likely to be sold out or given to the family members of ministers, they alleged.

On both occasions, the advertisements were published in three newspapers of Urdu, Sindh and English languages, said another protester, Sajjad Baloch.For him, a seven-to-one ratio at the interview - around 200 candidates for 30 posts - had offered a glimpse of hope. But with 15 to 20 times more candidates now, it is unlikely, he says, that the meritorious will go through. The protesters demanded that the government cancel the December 10 interviews and announce the posts through the SPSC.

Last year, the information department had recruited 12 officers through the public service commission, which took their written tests and interviews in July and November last year, respectively. This time, however, the department has opted to hire the people directly instead of assigning the task to the public service commission.

When asked to explain the process of direct hiring and advertisements in unfamiliar newspapers, the information department’s director general Zulfiqar Ali Chalwani refused to speak.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4^th, 2012