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Tuesday March 19, 2024

FBISE chairman’s contract extended for another year

By Jamila Achakzai
April 25, 2019

Islamabad : Even after serving first three years employment contract term and then two years extension period, Dr Ikram Ali Malik has got the go-ahead from the premier to stay put as the chairman of the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education for one more year.

The development comes as the prime minister’s office approves the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training’s summary seeking another extension in the service contract of the incumbent head of the FBISE, an autonomous body tasked with regulating intermediate and secondary education in Islamabad, the country’s cantonment areas, and Gilgit–Baltistan, and hold examinations in the educational institutions affiliated with it within the country and abroad.

Then an associate professor at the Economics Department of the Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, Dr Ikram had landed the job for three years in March 2014 after the prime minister rejected the two other nominees of the education ministry, including Muhammad Rafique Tahir, the current joint education adviser to the education ministry, and Prof Ali Ahmad Kharal, the current principal of Islamabad College for Boys, G-6/3.

His employment contract term expired in March 2017 but the then premier, Nawaz Sharif, extended it for two years on the ministry’s recommendation.

As that period ended last month, the education ministry, which oversees the FBISE under the headship of minister Shafqat Mehmood, sent the prime minister’s office a summary seeking extension in the FBISE chairman’s employment term until March 2020.

The premier was quick to offer the sought-after favour and thus, endorsing the education ministry’s approach of ad hocism to the affairs of the key educational organisation.

However, Dr Ikram’s service contract extension hasn’t formally taken effect due to delay in its notification by the Establishment Division.

Though required after the expiry of the contract term last month, Dr Ikram didn’t relinquish the charge of his office and opted to stay out, an act, which many consider an irregularity. Officials at the ministry are confident that the Establishment Division will issue the looked-for notification before the end of the current week.