KP Assembly regularises services of 4,500 govt employees

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Monday unanimously adopted the KP Employees (Regularisation of Services) Bill, 2018 besides KP Universities (amendment) Bill, and the KP Censorship of Motion Pictures (film, CDs, Videos, Stage Dramas and Shows) Bill, 2018.

The Employees Regularisation Bill provides for regularisation of services of about 4,500 employees of 58 various departments, institutions and projects in the province. They were appointed on ad hoc basis against civil posts or contract basis in projects.

Opposition members, including Fakhre Azam Wazir of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam’s Munawwar Khan had suggested adjusting about 16,000 other employees in the bill. But the speaker asked them to move a private members bill for the purpose so that the remaining employees could also be regularised.

Fakhre Azam had introduced some amendments to the bill but he withdrew his amendments on the assurance of the speaker and that of Minister Mehmood Khan.

Both the government and opposition agreed on regularising the services of the remaining employees through a bill to be introduced later.

Two more bills were also passed unanimously. The KP Censorship of Motion Pictures (film, CDs, Videos, Stage Dramas and Shows) Bill, 2018 was aimed at having a check on the stuff in movies, CDs and stage dramas, which was the domain of federal government before the 18th Amendment.

The House unanimously passed a resolution moved by Amna Sardar of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) and signed by other parties’ members. It asked the provincial government to request the federal government to use its influence for stopping the ongoing war in Syria where innocent civilians, including women and children were being killed.

Through another resolution the federal government was asked to revise the decision of abolishing the KP Assembly seats in Chitral, Swabi, Charsadda and Abbottabad.

The resolution moved by PPP Salim Khan was about the Chitral seat but Minister Mushtaq Ghani presented his amendment for inclusion of other districts in it.

PML-N parliamentary leader Sardar Aurangzeb Nalotha raised the issue of varsity students’ protest in Abbottabad, saying 70 students of IT Department were expelled from the varsity which led to the protest.

The administration instead of solving the problem called police and lodged cases against 23 protesting students, he added. He said the university had raised fee from Rs28,000 to 48,000 which is injustice.

In his reply Minister Mushtaq Ghani said the students were expelled for not clearing their examination and they held protest without bringing the matter into our notice. However, he said a committee had been constituted to look into the matter and submit its report while first information reports against the students would be withdrawn.