Employment opportunity: LG department to hire clerical secretaries

Previous appointments were cancelled after CM received reports of favouritism

PESHAWAR: The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa local government secretary has ordered the hiring of clerical staff for village and neighbourhood councils across the province. Clerical secretaries will be hired as per a notification by the local government and rural development department (LG&RD) on Friday.

According to a copy of the document available with The Express Tribune, DCs have been directed to recruit the staff.

The chief minister said the process must be completed at the earliest.

According to local government officials, the provincial government recruited secretaries as Grade-7 employees to run affairs at 3,501 village or neighbourhood councils.

Each council must have a secretary and the department already has 854 secretaries from the previous local government set up, while the remaining vacancies will be filled soon.

The department arranged a National Testing Service (NTS) assessment to screen the candidates who applied for the job.

Committees comprising the DCs of respective districts, a tehsil municipal administration representative and a local government assistant director were the appointing authority after NTS tests. They also had the authority to award extra marks, but this privilege was stripped after the chief minister received reports of favouritism. All recruitments made under the authority of these officials were cancelled on October 2.

A provincial inspection team was directed to conduct an enquiry into the “illegal appointments” within a week. “The team has submitted its enquiry report with various suggestions depending on  the cases, said an official.

The recruitments had different irregularities and suggestions were given accordingly,” he added.

Chief Minister’s Press Secretary Mubashir Rahim Malik said the districts from where complaints were received included Chitral and Haripur.

Meanwhile, an official of the local government department said the process would be completed soon as per the recruitment policy of the province and the K-P Estacode.

“No new NTS will be conducted and the previous test marks will be used,” confirmed a senior official.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 15^th, 2015.