LAHORE - Punjab Irrigation and Drainage Authority (PIDA) is ignoring the regularisation and promotion of the officers and other staff working in the department since 1998 and 2002. About 56 officers of grade-17 and 12 of grade-18 are facing repeated nods from the Authority without any solid reasons against their applications of regularisation and promotions, The Nation learnt. As per details, Punjab Irrigation and Drainage Authority (PIDA) is an autonomous body and it can solve and handle all its administrative matters including recruitments, regularisations and promotions. The officers working in grade 17 and 18 who were recruited on contractual basis initially, have also completed their two to three terms of contract but still waiting for their regularisations desperately. The officers told this scribe that they had also forwarded their applications repeatedly to the PIDA Authority (PIDA managing director) for their regularisations but nothing has been done yet. Some officials of PIDA also said that most of the officers are coordinating with the farmers organisations (FOs) and offering their role and duties for keeping and maintaining the performance of the FOs better. They alleged that non-approval of the officers regularisation is continuously affecting the working of PIDA. The officers said that Lahore High Court had also issued directions to the PIDA Managing Director for fixing the 20 per cent promotion quota of the PIDA officers but so far the Punjab Irrigation Secretary, who is also the managing director (MD) of PIDA, has not taken satisfactory measures to promote the 56 officers of grade 17 and 12 officers of grade-18. They also revealed another story that despite Punjab governments announcement of regularisation of officers up to grade 15, they are yet to get the regularisation orders. They added that a summary, issued about two months ago, by Punjab Irrigation Secretary was sent to the S&GAD for the promotions of the officers. The S&GAD sent the summary back to MD PIDA with the remarks that PIDA is an autonomous body and it can take all the decisions of promotions and recruitments on its own without any complication. They claimed, on condition of anonymity, that a meeting of PIDA high ups would be held on September 15. The agenda of the meeting is to ponder over the promotions and regularisations of about 107 lower officials (from grade 1 to 15) of the PIDA. The officers of grade 17 and 18 said that PIDA Authority should also keep their regularisations and promotions on top of the agenda so that they could be given their due right. The MD PIDA did not attend the repeated phone calls made by this scribe to know his version about the much-awaited delay in the regularisation and promotion of the PIDA officers of grade 17 and 18.