August 28, 2007	Tuesday	Sha’aban 14, 1428

KARACHI, Aug 27: The National Internship Programme launched with much fanfare in May this year was not able to maintain its appeal in Sindh as reflected by the lukewarm response from the youth.

Internees are said to have complained of lack of productive work in the government ministries and departments where they were placed.

According to informed sources as many as over 550 youths selected for the programme in the province did not turn up to take up their assignment. They constituted part of the second batch of internees numbering about 2,084 selected for the province.

According to the sources at the S&GD department most of the youths, who did not turn up, belonged to the interior. They were reluctant to accept placement in Karachi due to accommodation and family problems. Many of these after taking up assignments left on the pretext of family problems at home.

While the placement under the second batch of internees has not been completed, the Sindh government has received a third batch of 562 internees from Islamabad. A senior official of the S&GD claimed that the new list was being processed and placement would begin in a week.

An ugly incident, such as one that reportedly occurred at the ministry of irrigation and power, where about 12 internees - all of them electrical engineers - were asked to wash dishes, said to have blotched the charm of internship. The order, according to the staff, infuriated the internees, who in protest tore up their salary cheques and left the assignment.

When a senior official was asked to comment on the incident he did not deny it and said that the department had received reports about the incident but the aggrieved internees did not report the matter to the S&GD department.

After the incident most of the internees were reluctant to take up assignments in the Sindh government ministries and departments where the attitude of some of the officers is perceived to be improper. Besides, these departments were already overstaffed and the employees themselves do not have much to do.

In the light of such incidents most of the internees opted for placement in top class educational institutions such as the Karachi University and the NED Engineering University but to their dismay these universities have regretted to take any further number of internees because they said that they were already full.

The S&GD officials said that the new comers would be sent to the education (colleges) and health department (hospitals) if the candidate has a master degree in education or is a MBBS.

Another anomaly, which marred the smooth running of scheme in the province, was inclusion of candidates in the list of selected internees, who did not possess a Masters degree, which was a precondition for eligibility to the scheme. These candidates were selected by authorities in Islamabad and the provinces have no fault of theirs.

Confirming the anomaly the S&GD official confirmed that the institutions where these candidates were placed had been asked to verify their degrees before giving them a task.

The last but not the least is the mismanagement at the S&GD department, which despite receiving and placing internees does not have a computerised record on the movement and department-wise and city-wise placement of internees.