PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Monday amended a law to provide legal cover to Chief Minister Pervez Khattak’s illegal move to delegate his powers as the chairman of the Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority’s board of directors to his special assistant.

The move was made almost a year ago, Jan 2016 to be exact.

At that time, the CM passed on his powers as the chairman of the Tevta’s board of directors to his special assistant on technical education, Arshad Ali, who belongs to the Qaumi Watan Party, in violation of the relevant law i.e. the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority Act, 2015.

In a bid to provide legal cover to that illegal move, amendment to the KPTECTA Act, 2015, was tabled.

Assembly amends law allowing CM to pass on his powers as Tevta BoG chairman

The house unanimously passed the law.

Also, several other clauses of the law were also amended.

Interestingly, the amendment to the law was tabled by Arshad Ali.

The major amendment was approved in Clause 3 (ii) which states “Provided that the chief minister may, if deems appropriate, nominate a minister, special assistant or adviser, as the case may be to act as chairperson of the board.”

The delegation of power as chairperson to special assistant will be considered to have taken affect from March 2015, while the rest of the amendments will be considered after enactment of the law.

The provision dealing with the delegation of power states, “It shall come into force at once except clause (ii) of section 3, which shall be deemed to have taken effect from 11th of March 2015.”

The CM had delegated his power of the chairperson in January 2016 to his special assistant and MPA of the QWP after its rejoining the provincial government in October 2015.

Earlier, the PTI had expelled the QWP from the government in November 2013 over the alleged corruption of the latter’s ministers.

The chief minister’s power was delegated through a notification by the industry and technical education department.

Under the previous law, the quorum required for the Tevta BoD is 14 members. After the amendment, the number has gone down to nine.

Moreover the post of the vice chairperson of the board has been abolished and its powers have been assigned to the chairperson.

Under the original law, it is the responsibility of the Tevta vice chairperson to assist the board in adopting a vision for quality improvement in technical education and vocation training in additional to help the Tevta in strategising options for self sustainability etc.

Now, these powers will be used by the chairperson.

Under the law, the Tevta is responsible to impart such technical education and vocational skills through institutions under its administrative and regulatory control, which is based on syllabi acceptable internationally and accredited with national and international institutions.

The Tevta is also responsible to produce nationally and internationally acceptable hands on experience to its trainees for the purpose hereinafter appearing.

Speaker Asad Qaiser adjourned the session until Thursday.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2017