03 January 2004	Saturday	10 Ziqa'ad 1424

LAHORE, Jan 2: The Punjab government has no plans to regularize the services of its contract and work-charged employees.

Provincial Minister for Housing and Urban Development Syed Ali Raza Gilani made this statement at the Punjab Assembly here on Friday while responding to a question of Syed Ihsan Ullah Waqas about the fate of 3,000 employees of Wasa who had been working for the last three years without being regularized.

Financial constraints necessitated such a policy, the minister said and added: "There are thousands of such employees working in various departments of the provincial government.

If their services were regularized now, the pension bill of Punjab government would exceed its budget by the year 2022. For this reason, the government was unable to regularize services of all such employees."

The opposition members, however, insisted that such a policy was discriminatory as it was only applied to low-rank employees. The government should either extend it to secretaries and DIGs or grant an exemption to low-rank employees as well, they demanded.

The minister assured the house that the government would soon enact some law for these employees keeping in view its financial constraints. Another opposition member, Raja Shafqat Abbasi, said that the Supreme Court of Pakistan, in the case of NIRC employees, had ruled in favour of contract and work-charged employees.

The minister said that case of NIRC employees was being reviewed on its individual merits but the policy had not been extended to others.

Meanwhile, deputy opposition leader Rana Sana Ullah asked the government on a point of order to clarify the administrative division between ministers and district governments of all such departments that had been devolved. At present, he said, there was confusion about the division of work.

The MPAs do not know which question should be directed to the minister and which to the district government. Rana Sana Ullah was insisting on his point of order when the speaker announced that time allocated for the question hour had run out.

The session had started one hour late, at 10am. At 10:05am, the opposition pointed out a lack of quorum. The bells rang for the next 50 minutes and the government was able to manage quorum at 10:55am.

The Punjab Assembly, before its adjournment until 3pm on Monday, referred the Punjab Education Foundation Bill and the Punjab Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (Amendment) Bill to standing committees for report within seven days.