LAHORE – At a time when the Supreme Court was cleansing different state departments of the contractual employees, the federal government not only inducted more than 100 officials in the FIA on contract basis but also regularised 17 officers of Grade-17 and 18 in the agency in sheer violation of the rules and regulations, sources in the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.
A FIA officer of in Lahore, who was waiting for promotion, said it was unprecedented in the history of the agency to regularise two contract Grade-18 officers. He said most of the regularised officers were from the IT Department, while the government justified the move claiming that their services were unavoidable for the FIA.
He was of the view that majority of the regularised personnel had graduated from the Al-Khair University - an ill-reputed educational institution - and the more qualified and deserving serving staff could have been appointed to the said posts.
It is worth mentioning that the Interior Ministry has issued a notification available with TheNation wherein it declared that 17 FIA officers have been regularised against the posts mentioned against their names. The beneficiaries are: Nauman Ashraf Bodla (Deputy Director Grade-18), Tahir Khan (Application Developer Grade-17), Sarwat Hamid Butt (Statistician Grade-18), Wazir Ahmad (Assistant Database Administrator Grade-17) and Aftab Ali (System Administrator Grade-17).
Assistant Network Administrator Grade-17: Muhammad Asif, Syed Amir Ali, Mohsin Ali Khan, Muhammad Asif Mughal, Fiaz Ahmad, Tahir Ali, Ateeq Javed and Imran Chaudhry.
ADBA-cum-ANA in Grade 17: Muhammad Ishaq, Muhammad Salem and Qasim Ali Malik. Nasir Ali (Quality Assurance Officer Grade-16).
Another FIA official said the government was inducting its loyalists, as he questioned not utilising the Federal Public Service Commission for recruitments in Grade-17. He claimed that majority of these officers were hired on deputation from different departments or on contract basis without advertising these positions in newspapers, which is a mandatory exercise.
Their regularisation is being considered as yet another effort by the government to induct the loyalists as thousands of employees sacked in 1997 have already been reinstated costing the national exchequer Rs 2.4 billion, a figure admitted by the finance minister while responding to a question in the National Assembly. The FIA officials are in consultation to move the court against the decision. “We will file a writ petition in the Supreme Court since our promotions are being hindered because of such regularisation.”