ISLAMABAD, Dec 2: Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari on Thursday directed the officials of his ministry and all its 16 subsidiary departments to make arrangements for the start of e-hiring next month.

The directives were issued in a meeting held to review the steps being taken by the ministry and its attached departments to implement e-hiring by January as announced by the minister on October 28.

"I want the ministry and its attached departments to be a role model for other ministries and public sector organizations in adopting the process of e-hiring," he said.

He said the e-hiring plan would be implemented in two phases: with the ministry of information technology and its subsidiaries starting online hiring from January 1, followed by other government organizations in the second phase.

The objective of the initiative, he said, was to encourage the people to use information and communication technology and make the hiring process cost-effective for the government.

He directed the heads of all the subsidiary organizations of the ministry to ensure that from January 1 all the jobs were advertised through their online recruitment system. However, a brief advertisement would be published in the press giving the web link to the online recruitment system from where the users could apply online.

He said the ministry was already funding a project for the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) to automate the recruitment process of the federal government. The minister said he was confident that such a system would ultimately replace the traditional mode of hiring to save time, money and resources of public sector organizations.

Mr Leghari said the system would be used for candidates applying for posts in grade six and above. The process of e- hiring would also do away with the phenomenon of incomplete or wrongly-filled out applications as the electronically processed applications would be computer-guided and easy to be filled out because of the online instructions and guidelines made available side by side with different sections of the applications.