KP govt creates 28 posts in PA Secretariat

PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led administration has created 28 posts in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Secretariat in its 19-month rule.
This has raised the number of the employees at the secretariat to 561.The posts created during the tenure of the incumbent Speaker of the assembly, Asad Qaiser, include a special secretary in grade-19. Posts of naib qasid in grade-1 were also created.
The majority of the employees for whom these positions have been created belong to Swabi, the native district of the Speaker. Some of those recruited are from his village Marghuz in Swabi.
This was revealed in the data provided by the provincial Assembly Secretariat on Monday in response to the information request submitted by this scribe on December 26, 2014 under the Section 7 of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Right to Information Act 2013.
It shows that after taking charge of the affairs in the province, the PTI-affiliated Speaker created 28 posts in the assembly secretariat. This included the position of the special secretary in grade-19, five other officers in grade-17 including an assistant director (Information Technology), network administrator, database administrator, programmer and web administrator, along with an Urdu reporter.
According to the certified details provided by the assembly secretariat, 23 employees have been appointed during the last one year.Posts for seven naib qasids, one cook, four gardeners in BPS-1, two daftri in BPS-2, three lift-operators, one assistant security guard in BPS-4, two hardware technicians in BPS-14 and two IT technicians in BPS-12 have been created during the period.
The information provided by the secretariat also suggests that at least 16 of these new appointees belong to different villages of Swabi including Marghuz, the native village of the Speaker.
These new appointees also include Syed Waqar Ali Shah, basically an officer of Group-VI of the Pakistan International Airlines Corporation (PIAC), who was appointed as special secretary in grade-19 for an initial period of three years on deputation basis on December 27, 2013. The Speaker also approved his absorption in the assembly secretariat on December 15, 2014.
However, an employee of the assembly secretariat on the condition of anonymity claimed that Abid Abrar, staff officer to the Speaker, has submitted a petition to the Speaker against the appointment of Syed Waqar Ali Shah as special secretary.
He added that petition to the Speaker about any anomaly occurring in the assembly secretariat was a legal requirement before approaching any court of law for remedy.It may be mentioned that as an autonomous body the appointment of employees right from the secretary to that of the naib qasid level has now become an accepted norm as the speakers in almost all the governments in the past have also created posts in the assembly secretariat and appointed people from their respective constituencies.
At the moment the provincial assembly secretariat has a total of 561 officers and other employees, including one secretary in grade-21, one senior additional secretary and three special secretaries in grade-20, one special secretary to Speaker and 15 other officers in grade-19, some 32 officers in grade-18 and 53 others in grade-17 serving in different departments of the assembly secretariat.