Daily Times

After getting nod from authorities concerned, a Parliamentary Committee issued show-cause notice to Director General (DG) Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) Dr Ikram Ali Malik for non-compliance of Speaker National Assembly’s (NA) ruling as well as well as refusal from implementation of Committee’s decisions.

This was said by Chairman Special Committee on Affected Employees Qadir

Khan Mandokhail here at a presser on Saturday. He informed the Journalists that the approval got from the committee members for issuance of show-cause notice as well as making some policies to give relief to daily-wage employees of the FDE and other departments.

“There had been hired 1750 on daily-wage basis to fill the employees’ deficiency gap while they were being paid even less than a labourer,” he recalled.

Mandokhail further added that for 28000 such employees in different departments got relief for regularization of their services in respective cadres, adding that his government would never show helplessness before “curt” bureaucracy who ever make hurdles to give people their rights. “I can step down from my position but can’t refrain from making ease for the public as it was also the main manifesto of our party,” he reaffirmed.

Mandokhail’s committee, earlier, directed FDE authorities to resolve and report to the committee the longstanding issue of employees’ regularization within three days in light of Khursheed Shah Committee’s findings.

The FDE, however, worked with a dilly-dally approach which perturburbed lawmaker who came publically to lambasting authorities for such laxities.

The parliamentary body also recommended increasing daily wagers salaries to RS 25,000 and Rs 30,000 per month.

“The monthly salary of such employees from BPS-01 to BPS-15 should be raised to Rs 25,000 and Rs 30,000 respectively,” the committee directed FDE authorities.

The sources disclosed to Daily Times that the issue, however, has some legal complications due to which it has remained unsolved yet, adding that before this some daily-wage teaching staffers were also confirmed by the authorities through prescribed procedure. They further disclosed to this scribe that 220 other gazetted daily-wage staffers are also declared regular through Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) and only their interviews and issuance of joining letters is pending.

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government had introduced a policy for contractual employees and daily wagers of the federal government in 2009. A sub-committee of the cabinet was formed to further discuss the devised policy, and the committee directed regularization of 100,000 daily wagers, who had been working in various federal departments and ministries. Many departments reported compliance of this committee’s findings but the FDE still dilly-dallied to act upon order of the committee.

A couple of years back, a three-member SC bench categorically gave a verdict in favour of these employees. The apex court remarked “all daily-wage employees should give joining applications in their respective departments”.

Moreover, the FDE also has a shortage of teaching and non-teaching staffers. As per education experts, if authorities look into the matter seriously these daily-wagers a gap of staff deficiency in FDE’s intuitions can also be filled.