ISLAMABAD: The Senate’s Functional Committee on Devolution on Thursday asked the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) chief secretary (CS) to pay one-year salaries to teachers working under the worker welfare schools (WWS). The committee held its meeting in Parliament House headed by Senator Kabeer Muhammad Shahi. The body was informed that during the previous KP governments, some teachers were appointed, who could not meet the required criteria and were appointed after getting money or on a political basis. When PTI came to power in 2013, it found that some of the teachers in the WWS were illegally appointed. As a result their salaries were stopped. In this regard, several enquires were carried out by NAB, the provincial government and other investigative agencies. Worker Welfare Board Secretary Alamgir Shah said that the total strength of teaching and non-teaching staff was over 4,000 of which only 1000 were regular and the rest were on contract. He also claimed that record of most of the staff was either missing, taken by NAB or set on fire. With available record, only 1,774 contractual teachers met the required criteria while 663 had fake degrees or were not qualified. The secretary said the salaries of 1,774 teachers were cleared by February while the rest moved court. Senator Attaur Rehman informed the committee that cases were registered over the illegal appointments in worker welfare board schools. The appointments were made after taking money. He also claimed that on one post up to 8 persons were appointed and the salary was distributed among them. He suggested that the cleared staff should be regularised as soon as possible. A majority of the legislators were of the view that it was a provincial matter. The body, however, asked the chief secretary to resolve the issue as soon as possible. The committee also took up the public petition regarding “statues of devolution of powers of from Accountant General Balochistan to District Account Officers/Treasury office, Balochistan”. Petitioner Rafiullah Kakar, who is also president of Treasury and Accounts Association Balochistan, told the committee that accounting function was the sole domain of provinces. The treasuries/district account offices were established throughout the province and functioning smoothly under the administrative control of the Balochistan Finance Department. He said in January 2010 the department issued a notification regarding upgrading of treasury offices and converted them into district account offices in compliance with decisions taken in a meeting attended by the Balochistan AG. He said several letters were written by the department and controller general of accounts Islamabad to the Balochistan AG to hand over the functions to treasuries/district account offices, but the AG was reluctant to comply with his commitment. The committee decided to summon the Balochistan Law Division and Finance Department to assist the committee in making final recommendations.