Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Senator Hidayatullah Khan has said that the thorny issue of 5,545 posts in service delivery sector for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) will be sanctioned by the Ministry of Finance within a week, adding that the ministry sent the summary back to FATA Secretariat for review.

A total of 5,545 posts are required in the service delivery sectors in FATA and the Ministry of Finance has agreed to sanction only 2,200 of them, he said.

“I’ve accepted and asked them to give us those 2,200 posts, because we are poor people, and the approval of the posts will help stabilise the area,” he remarked.

He said the flaw was that there were posts for primary and middle schools, but most of those schools had been upgraded to high level now.

“God willing, the matter will be sorted out within a week when I sit with the Ministry of Finance officials,” he said.

He said that of the total 2,200 approved posts, 1,400 were related to the health and education sectors.

The vital health and education sectors in FATA tend to suffer because Senator Hidayatullah from Bajaur tribal region and the FATA Secretariat had some serious reservations.

“FATA needs 2,293 positions after rationalising them from the 5,545 posts,” said a senior official at the Ministry of Finance who wished to go unnamed.

The recently held meeting of Senate Standing Committee for Finance had approved a total of 824 posts in education and another 618 in health sector.

However, Muzaffar Burki, deputy financial adviser at the Ministry of Finance, told Daily Times that the issue should be deliberated upon by the FATA Secretariat to avoid further delay.

“At this time, FATA direly needs education and health to be stabilised,” Burki added.

Khan Malik, president of all FATA Teachers Association, said that the FATA Secretariat should get the sanctioned posts in the interest of children in FATA. “It is a good move that they have approved 1,400 posts. They will approve 1,400 more in the second phase,” Malik added.

Muhammad Nawaz, a tribal elder from Mohmand region, said that educational institutions and hospitals elsewhere in the tribal areas face serious problems like dearth of medicines, paramedical staff and shortage of class four employees. “The ill-fated tribal region did not get the development the way it was expected after flushing out of militancy,” he rued.

He said that the sanctioned posts covered 28.5 percent of the requirements in the health, while another 35 percent in the education sector, which was far below the requirements.

Earlier, Shahid Mehmood had said that all the posts couldn’t be sanctioned in one go because of financial restraints.

“The cost of all these vacancies is estimated at Rs 3 billion annually and it will pressurise the federal government financially. It is impossible to sanction all the posts in one go,” the official remarked.

Official at the FATA Secretariat said they required the vacancies in service delivery areas ranging from educational institutions to health.

Malik said he had called a meeting of FATA teachers on November 19 to discuss the overall state of education and the stalemate in sanctioning of the posts for FATA education sector. “We will work out a joint strategy to resolve the issue at the earliest during our scheduled meeting,” Malik added.

Published in Daily Times, November 14^th 2017.