Mass recruitment scam surfaces in LWMC

LAHORE:The fate of the ongoing jobs of over 4,500 sanitary workers is unclear as an alleged scandal of mass recruitment against bribe and favouritism hit the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC).

Some two months back, LWMC advertised in various newspapers about recruitment on which hundreds of thousands of applicants applied. However, LWMC Chairman Riaz Hameed announced that the company would first re-recruit its existing staff and sanitary workers and no age limit was fixed for the existing workers.

In response to the company’s advertisement, all workers, including those who were hired by company’s two Turkish contractors through third party, also applied. The company in first phase started recruiting those workers, who were on its own payroll and were recruited through a company named Skill Hub. These workers were around 2,400 out of which 2,100 were rehired and recently they started receiving appointment letters.

On the other hand, over 4,731 sanitary workers hired by Turkish contractors through third party companies namely Salman and Co and Zohaib and Co were asked to stop coming on duty as their hiring was still pending.

Astonishingly, in the first phase, a good number of sanitary workers of the third party of Turkish contractors were also given appointment letters on which allegations of receiving bribe/favouritism by company’s HR and Operations department started to surface. Complaints in this regard were also received by company’s senior management.

Following the complaints that over 1,000 sanitary workers were recruited and it was alleged that many of them paid Rs50,000 to Rs200,000 for their reappointment, company’s Deputy Managing Director (DMD) held a departmental inquiry.

Meanwhile, LWMC Managing Director recently made a scrutiny committee to resolve the issue. The letter, a copy of which was available with the scribe, stated that with reference to advertisement against applications on various vacancies in LWMC projects of Lahore and Multan, a three-member scrutiny committee was constituted. The members were HR General Manager Farrukh Butt, Senior Manager Ops Murtaza Ch and Manager GIS Shoaib Dar.

As per the letter, the committee will revisit the whole recruitment process and will certify whether the process was taken up as per rules, if not, will specify the areas where act has been committed, the committee will go through all the provisions of the approval paper got from LWMC CEO and will check whether all the conditions have been fulfilled if not followed it will be specified.

The committee will also take into consideration that attendance of cut-off month of March 2020 has been duly considered for recruitment or there are violations of the policy, the committee will check whether changes brought into different lists have some malafide or not and any other matter related to the recruitment will be taken up by the committee.

Meanwhile, the management also constituted an inquiry committee headed by company’s Chief Financial Officer to inquire into the allegations of bribe and favouritism. This committee will submit its report within the next seven days, said General Manager HR while talking with the scribe. He said the scrutiny committee and inquiry committee will work separately and were constituted to ensure transparency in the company.

LWMC DMD while talking with the scribe said that complete inquiry would be done into the allegations of corruption and no one would be pardoned if found guilty. The company’s chairman said no worker would be left alone and the company would hire all sanitary workers through third parties of the Turkish contractors.