ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat on Friday expressed concern over how most machines at the Printing Corporation of Pakistan (PCP) were obsolete and its staff not properly trained.

The committee said the government should provide the funding for making PCP a profitable unit and to help it meet the country’s requirements.

The PCP was established in 1969 and is one of the oldest public sector corporations in the country.

It consists of three printing presses located in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, with its headquarters being in Islamabad.

PCP Managing Director Talat Altaf told the committee that most of the machines at the corporation were between 30 and 40 years old which is why efficiency of the institute was compromised.

Parliamentarians ask government to provide funds to PCP

She said the corporation required 16 machines worth Rs846 million in order to make it profitable, and that the PCP’s land in Lahore Urdu Bazar could be sold for this.

The committee’s chairman, Rana Mohammad Hayat Khan, then asked about the future and scope of the PCP’s business.

Ms Altaf said that during the elections alone, the PCP prints 200 million ballot papers and does business worth Rs2 billion.

The committee directed the Cabinet Division to move a summary regarding the provision of financial assistance to the PCP so that the committee could raise the issue at the appropriate forum.

CSS exams issue

Members of the committee expressed dissatisfaction with the poor result for the Central Superior Services (CSS) exams of 2016 in which only 2pc of students passed.

The committee said the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) should determine the reasons for the poor results and come up with suggestion for ensuring a better result in the future.

CSS exams are the most important in the country which some of the highest achieving students in the country attempt. Appointments in the foreign office, bureaucracy, lower judiciary, police, customs and secretariat are made through these exams.

During the last meeting, FPSC representatives had informed members that 9,643 students had appeared in the exam in 2016 of which only 202 had passed.

The committee was also told that pass percentage had been decreasing over the last four years and that the pass percentage in 2014 was 3.33pc, 3.11pc in 2015 and 2.09pc in 2016.

Members of the committee were told that 144 students from Punjab cleared the exam last year as did 12 from rural Sindh, 16 from urban Sindh, 18 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, four from Balochistan, four from Azad Jammu and Kashmir and one from Gilgit-Baltistan.

Published in Dawn, January 14th, 2017