MULTAN: The Multan Waste Management Company (MWMC) has hired officers, including its managing director (MD), in the violation of a recruitment policy by the provincial government, Dawn has learnt.

According to the recruitment policy of 2014, there are 100 marks to determine the merit of a candidate, according to which five marks are for each interview and professional qualification, 10 marks for entry test and remaining 80 marks are for academic qualification of the applicant.

They said that former managing directors (MDs) Ahmad Shahryar, Muhammad Imran Noor and incumbent MD Anwaarul Haq were also among the officers appointed against the rules and even the approval of the competent authority -- the general manager of human resources and administration -- was not sought.

They said that the employees were appointed through direct interviews without evaluating the scores of other candidates as evaluation score of each of the candidate and merit list were not established and reasons for not recommending any candidate were also not mentioned.

Mr Shahryar was hired MD, Mr Noor chief finance officer, Usman Khurshid and Anwaarul Haq deputy managers, Aamir Maqbool assistant manager (human resource), Engineer Nisar Salahuddin assistant manger (maintenance), Kiran Perveen assistant manager (complaint cell) and Fareeha executive officer.

In November 2016, Mr Shahryar resigned from the post and Mr Noor was given the acting charge of the MD.

Mr Noor was suspended after Local Government Secretary Javed Mehmood Bhatti constituted a two-member committee on December 22, 2017 to probe into alleged misappropriation of Rs900 million in the company through tampering with records.

The committee was constituted on the complaint of company’s former chairman board of directors and MPA Rana Ejaz Noon after Audit Officer Mohib Ali Magsi found that most of the chairman’s signatures did not match each other on the board’s meetings.

The former chairman was asked to confirm the status of his signatures. Mr Noon denied his signatures on the minutes of two meetings besides identifying forgery in the minutes of three other meetings.

He also provided the original copies of the record. Mr Noon remained the BoD chairman from Nov 17, 2016 to Feb 2017. The audit team calculated the amount which had been misappropriated as Rs900m.

Mr Noon alleged that Mr Noor was given the officiating charge of the MD after the resignation of Mr Shaheryar; he was not given the financial as well as administrative powers.

He said that Mr Noor was not authorised to sign a cheque for more than Rs100,000 as a committee was authorised to check the cheques for more than Rs100,000 and submit its recommendations to the board for a approval.

Mr Noor, however, rejected allegations by Mr Noon as “baseless and false”.

Mr Anwaarul Haq was given the acting charge of the MD after Mr Noor was suspended.

Mr Haq said that when the appointments were made, the criteria was not formed for candidates, rather a board conducted their interviews.

He said that such objections were raised in other companies as well.

“We are not government employees, as the company is a semi-government where we have been appointed on a contract basis,” he added.

Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2018