Daily Times

KARACHI: A three-member scrutinising committee comprising Sindh government officials would inspect civil structures of Water And Sewerage Authority (WASA), Hyderabad and Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB).

The rules-of-business committee would examine service profiles of all of employees in detail to examine whether officers were lawfully appointed and promoted in light of principles laid down by the Supreme Court (SC) in a case reported as contempt proceedings against Sindh Chief Secretary and other (2013 SCMR 1752) and Ali Azhar Khan Baloch and other versus province of Sindh and other (2015 SCMR 456).

A team comprising of Local Government Department Secretary Khalid Hyder Shah, Irrigation Department Additional Secretary Ghulam Ali Brahmani and other relevant officials would complete this exercise within one month from October 12. The KWSB MD would facilitate the proposed inquiry and once the committee reaches a conclusion, he would issue orders accordingly. However, aggrieved parties can approach SCP for legal recourse.

The committee would take up matters of detail and scrutinise KWSB officials from BPS-15 to BPS-20 grade, as more than 2,500 officials would come into net.

Local Government Department (LGD) Sindh has reiterated its stance that retired officials of KWSB and other civic bodies would not be allowed job on contract in their respective entities.

It may be instructive to note that around 526 KWSB officials including the board’s managing director, deputies and directors are going to retire from services by June 30, 2019 on attaining the age of superannuation i.e 60 years from December 31, 2017 to June 30, 2019.

At present, around 11,906 officials from BPS grade are serving the entity and around 3,200 posts in different PBS cadres are still lying vacant including 3 posts of BPS-20 for many years. However, 486 employees are serving the entity under deceased quota while another 700 in the same category are waiting to get employed.

“Sindh government has stopped verification process of degrees of KWSB officials working under BPS-16 to BPS-20,” officials of Human Resources Department of KWSB revealed. “The first ever verification process had been planned in March 2017 for which government had allocated Rs 10 million,” they informed.

“The education boards and universities in Sindh have increased verification fee twofold from previous level”, said the officials. The secondary and higher secondary certificates, graduation and master degrees besides engineering degrees of the employees had to be sent to their respective education boards and universities in Karachi and other parts of Sindh from where they had passed out.

In order to perform this task, degrees and certificates of the employees had to be sent to over 24 districts of Sindh. Most of officials of KWSB belong to Hyderabad, Larkana, Khairpur, Shikarpur, Jacobabad and Mirpurkhas.

According to KWSB, five officials of 20-grade, 46 of 19-grade, 220 of 18-grade, 307 of grade-17 and 625 officials of grade-16 have been put on verification of education credential. They belong to Finance, Land, Administration and Planning, Taxation, Bulk Water, Electrical, Mechanical and Projects besides officials serving districts east, west, south, central, Malir and Korangi of the entity.

Reportedly, paying 11,990 employees on a monthly basis has resulted in a budget of Rs 394.76 million (m) and the expenditure incurred on paying more than 8,000 pensioners stands at around Rs 111.99 million (m).

The rule of business of committee’s tasks include examining political appointments, different types of corruption pending cases of more than 300 employees, pending inquiries of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against several officials and to examine reasons behind failure in taking action against 260 employees despite availability of data.

Published in Daily Times, October 14^th 2018.