A sub-committee of the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology on Tuesday dubbed as "hubs of loot and plunder" the National Testing Service (NTS) and other testing services which conduct written tests for recruitments in different government departments.
The committee met under the chair of its Convenor Kalsoom Perveen. "These testing services like NTS are hubs of loot and plunder. They take hefty fees from candidates, most of whom belong to poor families, and take recruitment tests of different government departments. But the deserving candidates never qualify. These candidates appear again and again in the tests with a hope of getting government jobs which they never get. They pay heavy fees to the testing services who exploit the candidates as much as they can," Perveen remarked during the meeting.
"The lust of the testing services like NTS knows no bounds and there is no transparency at all. The NTS has been the centre-stage of serious controversies and scandals. It's high time for the federal government to take these testing services to task and shut them down immediately, once and forever," she added.
The sub-panel recommended that a comprehensive mechanism be established for recruitments in the federal and provincial government departments with the active involvement of relevant ministries at the federal and provincial levels. Apart from that, the sub-committee also discussed the appointments in federal government job on Balochistan quota. As many as 9,521 appointments have been made out of a total of 14,086 vacancies under the six per cent employment quota of Balochistan in the federal government jobs, the sub-committee of the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology was briefed.
In his briefing to the sub-committee, Additional Secretary Establishment Division Akhtar Jan Wazir said appointments on some 4,565 posts are under process while some 9,521 appointments have already been made out of 14,086 posts on Balochistan employment quota. Secretary Information Technology and Telecommunication Shoaib Ahmad Siddiqui briefed the sub-committee that under Balochistan employment quota, the number of required officials to be appointed in the ministry is 2.4 compared to four officials who are already working in the ministry. These include a section officer in basic scale (BS) 18, two lower division clerks (LDCs) and a driver, according to secretary IT.
A total of 114 personnel are employed by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication out of them 21 officers are working in BS 17-22, 59 officials in BS 4-16 and 34 officials are working in BS 1-2, he informed the sub-committee. Chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Major General Amir Azeem Bajwa (retd) informed the committee that PTA has made full implementation of employments on Balochistan quota. He said 116 employees are working in PTA.
The sub-committee expressed concern over the blockade of those Facebook pages that highlight serious human rights violations stemming from atrocities of Indian military in the Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK). The chairman PTA said that the PTA has nothing to do with the matter since the pages which support Kashmir cause are blocked by the Facebook management. The sub-panel recommended that the matter be effectively taken up with the Facebook management to ensure that the blocked pages are restored.