GUJRAT: The Punjab Land Records Authority (PLRA) has decided to recruit 594 service centre officials (SCOs) to be posted at computerised land record centers (CLRCs) at tehsil level across the province following the termination of 449 SCOs who failed to qualify an internal evaluation test.

According to a notification of the PLRA, the fresh recruitments will be made through National Testing Service; applications from interested individuals fulfilling the criteria for the said posts in at least 143 tehsils of Punjab have been sought till May 13.

The SCOs are known as ‘digital patwaris’ in the land revenue department as they mainly perform similar jobs as patwaris. An SCO would enter the mutation of any sale and purchase deed into a computerised system of the government, which was previously done by a patwari manually in official record registers.

However, the SCOs will be recruited on contract basis. The sacked officials had been terminated through a notification issued on April 4 with effect from March 28 as the department had conducted an evaluation that those officials could not pass. Only 29 SCOs were able to retain their seats.

449 SCOs were terminated for failing to qualify evaluation

The dismissal had caused an acute shortage of SCOs at the land record centres, and the PLRA now decided to hire substitutes across the province. The affected SCOs had filed a writ petition in the Lahore High Court as well as its Multan bench against their sacking besides staging a number of protests in front of the head office of the PLRA in Lahore.

The court is yet to take a decision in response to the petitions.

An affected official told Dawn that an action committee of the dismissed officials would file a separate case seeking stay against the department’s decision of making fresh recruitments against the seats vacated after their termination. He claimed that they had become victims of an internal rift between the senior hierarchies of PLRA.

The authority, as per government policy, has allocated quotas of jobs in various categories such as 3pc for disabled, 5pc for minorities, 15pc for women and 20pc for children of serving government servants in BPS 1-5. Moreover, disabled candidates are directed to submit a certificate issued from the Provincial Council for Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons of the social welfare department.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2017