‘FDE ignored in teacher recruitment panel’

Islamabad : The teachers have raised questions about the ongoing Federal Public Service Commission (FPCS) exercise to fill the Federal Directorate of Education’s (FDE) vacancies of lecturers (female) insisting the recruitment process is violating the prevalent procedure and protocol.

They told ‘The News’ that the interview panel appointed by the FPSC had four members and Federal Board of Intermediate & Secondary Education (FBISE) Chairman Qaisar Alam was one of them as a departmental representative of the FDE.

The teachers said the departmental representative was usually a senior officer from the relevant department with deeper knowledge of the demand and capacity of the positions to be filled. The panel has the chairman and a member from the FPSC, a subject specialist from any university or college, and the departmental representative of the relevant department.

They, however, said instead of the DG or some senior officer of the FDE, the FPSC had, in a strange move, appointed the FBISE chairman as the directorate’s departmental representative that was against the criterion and standard procedure for the recruitment. The teachers said the FPSC conducted the interview for lecturer posts on April 21 with the FBISE chairman acting as the departmental representative of the FDE.

They said the FDE should be represented in the panel by its director general and not an outsider and even if the DG was not available, an officer of BPS-20 of the Federal Education and Professional Training or a BPS-20 college principal should be engaged for the purpose in line with the previous practice. The teachers said the FBISE and FDE were two different organisations with different heads and objectives, so they should be represented by own officials in interviews for hiring the respective staff members.