Secondary boards still without chairmen

LAHORE: The process of appointing regular administrative heads of seven Boards of Intermediate & Secondary Education (BISEs) of Punjab seems to have been shelved, as the same has stalled after interviews of candidates almost a month ago.

The Higher Education Department (HED) Punjab had advertised the posts of Chairmen of seven BISEs, including Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Multan, Rawalpindi, Sahiwal and Sargodha, with November 16, 2017, as last date to apply.

The interviews of the shortlisted candidates were held on Dec. 15 and Dec. 16, 2017 and since then no progress has been witnessed except for a move to give additional charge of Chairmen to Commissioners of the respective divisions. Sources privy to developments said instead of forwarding names of suitable candidates to the Chief Minister for final selection, a summary was moved to give additional charge of the posts to Commissioners.

They said the move had raised an eyebrow with, stakeholders questioning as to why the interviews were conducted in the first place if the government wanted to give additional charge to commissioners. This was for the third time the exercise to select regular Chairmen of BISEs was completed from advertising the posts to conducting interviews of eligible candidates. Before these December interviews, the last interviews were held in September 2017 in which, it is learnt, names of two candidates were also finalised for the post Faisalabad and Gujranwala BISEs.

It is pertinent to mention that there are no regular Chairmen of Sargodha BISEs since December 2016, Rawalpindi BISE since March 2017, Gujranwala since May 2017, Faisalabad since September 2017, Multan and Sahiwal since October and Bahawalpur since November 2017.

The three BISEs where Commissioners have been given additional charge of the post of Chairmen are Sahiwal, Sargodha and Gujranwala. The Punjab government had decided to offer Management Position (MP-I) to the Chairmen of BISEs i.e., Rs370,000 per month. There is a general perception among the candidates that it was that pay package which did not let the government to place regular administrative heads of the boards.

However, when contacted, an official of HED said the CS’s committee had not moved the summary regardingadditional charge to Commissioners to the Chief Minister. Seeking anonymity, the official claimed the committee might finalize the names of the most suitable

candidates and forward the same to the CM soon. To a question about the verbal orders, the official said the committee had also prepared a summary for regularisation of this period.