Daily Times

LAHORE: The Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) is presently revamping its job portal Punjab Jobs Online to remove the flaws indicated by the candidates, Daily Times learnt on Monday.

The portal was created in 2017 on the instructions of Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif with a purpose of transparency in jobs, to monitor the recruitment process of different government departments and autonomous bodies along with keeping a track of job opportunities being created by the government of Punjab.

Daily Times further learnt that all the recruitments in the government sector were not being done through Punjab Public Service Commission as many departments and autonomous bodies of government of Punjab had their own recruitment processes; therefore the portal was developed to streamline the entire mechanism through one platform. Sources informed Daily Times that the job portal had several flaws due to which the applicants were facing confusions and problems in applying for a suitable job given on the portal. Sources informed that the categories of the educational degrees were missing in the advertisements posted by different government departments, the interface and login process was not user friendly whereas the age limits were also missing in advertisements. Sources informed that the career levels mentioned in the portal were also puzzling the candidates as they lacked any description for a layman. Moreover, the sources informed that all the government departments of Punjab were not listed in the portal.

A candidate who had applied for a job through the portal, Imran Ahmed said, “No description or note to use the portal was mentioned there on the landing page which led to extreme confusion and it took me much time to understand what it was. I tried calling on the numbers given on the portal to get information about using it but the numbers were not being answered. I also approached the concerned department who had advertised their job on the portal but their administration said that PITB knows the mechanism and I should ask them. When I finally entered into the portal page where I had to apply, the degrees required in the advertisement were missing in the categories and my application was thus refused by the system.”

He further added that if the government is taking such steps then it should have user friendly portals which anyone can use.

“It seemed as if the portal was only for very technical people and any layman would not find a job if he/she fails to use the unfriendly portal and yes I suggest that PITB must proof read their website and portal as it has spelling and grammar errors too,” Imran Ahmed remarked.

PITB Senior Programme Manager Uzair Shahid said that they had received both positive and negative feedbacks on the portal by the candidates or applicants using it.

“This was our first initiative and was one of its kinds in Punjab to create transparency in recruitment process. After gathering all the queries and feedback from the portal users we are now revamping it to make it more users friendly so that there are no confusions among the applicants using the portal,” Uzair Shahid said. He further informed that the portal would be revamped until August 2018 with a more user friendly version and the concerned officers from all the departments who are registered on the portal will also be trained to use it.

PITB Chairman Dr Umar Saif, while talking to Daily Times, said, “We also received similar complaints and I think that a missing degree or age limit also reflects that the recruitment criteria of the departments are outdated and they need to update it. We are standardising the system now and this will be a good initiative for digital audit of recruitment process. The departments blame PITB that we have loopholes in the portal but the point to understand is that we are just a platform. The incorporation of information into the portal is done by the departments’ staff that we train here at PITB for using the portal. We give the admin rights to each department with a login and they deal with their job ads. I think the departments need to upload the details accurately and mention the criteria clearly.”

Dr Umar Saif added that the PITB had developed this unified portal Punjab Jobs Online with an objective to enable job seekers to view all the job opportunities in Punjab through a single platform. He said that the portal was developed to bring transparency into the hiring process and would also decrease administrative overheads and burden on government departments and new jobs could be created and made available to the public online.

Published in Daily Times, May 29^th 2018.