The Senate's Standing Committee on Com-munications (Communications and Postal Services) on Friday barred the National Highway Authority (NHA) from regularising as many as 4,000 employees working as consultants. The committee, while directing the NHA to provide a complete record of all consultants whom the authority did not want to regularise, unanimously recommended that the Ministry of Communications should initiate promotion process of Members /GMs of the NHA.
The committee, which met with Senator Daud Khan Achakzai in the chair, expressed concern over the transfer of Chairman of NHA Hamid Ali Khan, who resumed the charge of the authority under a Supreme Court order.
The committee members, while criticising caretaker Prime Minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso, stressed that Khoso should be made accountable for passing orders which did not adhere with laws and regulations.
They urged the chairman of the committee to pass directives against the transfer of Mir Hazar Khan Khoso's son Shafqat Hussain Khoso, a grade 18 officer who was transferred to the NHA, as Director Maintenance, a post for only a Grade 19 officer in the NHA. Caretaker Minister for Communications Asadullah Khan Mandokhel told the committee members that Hamid Ali Khan had resumed the charge of chairman NHA, adding that the posting of the chairman had been notified by the Establishment Division (ED).
About regularisation of employees, Hamid Ali Khan said that employees working as consultant were not paid by the NHA, hence they could not be regularised.
He said that appointments on all posts in NHA are made against sanctioned /vacant posts in accordance with prescribed procedure mentioned in Appointment and Promotion Rules of 1995, adding that that NHA had regularised as many as 1.600 daily wage workers in the near past.
The committee was informed that the US government had released $40 million to USAID as the first tranche of the approved $90 million for Kalat-Quetta-Chaman road (N-5).
The NHA, officials said, was currently in the process of preparing an action plan for terminating existing contracts of N-5 and was carrying out joint measurement of works prior to mobilisation of FWO for execution of remaining work. The FWO is expected to commence work on N-5 by August this year. About the delay in starting maintenance work on damaged roads in Balochistan, NHA officials said that different construction works could not be initiated in the province because of severe weather in the winter. The NHA said maintenance work had started with the advent of summer. The committee was told that as per annual maintenance for 2012-13, Rs 1637 million had been allocated for repair and /maintenance of highways in Balochistan. Committee members included Senators Islamuddin Shaikh, Zahid Khan, Kamil Ali Agha, Mukhtiar Ahmed Dhamrah Aajiz, Mir Muhammad Yousuf Badini, Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo and Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri.