PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Apex Committee on Wednesday approved the creation of 17,000 additional posts in government departments for seven merged districts of the province.

The committee met here with KP Governor Shah Farman in the chair to discuss the situation after the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a Peshawar High Court decision to strike down the Fata Interim Governance Order, said a statement issued here.

The meeting was attended by Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, Corps Commander of Peshawar Lieutenant General Shaheen Mazhar Mahmood, provincial ministers Atif Khan, Shahram Khan Tarakai, Shaukat Yousafzai, Taimur Saleem Jhagra and Hasham Inamullah, adviser to the chief minister on merged districts Ajmal Khan Wazir, chief secretary Naveed Kamran Baloch, additional chief secretary Shehzad Bangash, inspector general of police Salahuddin Mehsud, FC inspector general Major General Rahat Naseem and advocate general Latif Yousafzai.

The statement said the participants discussed the overall merger plan for developmental integration of tribal districts, the induction of Levies and Khasadar personnel into the provincial police, and creation of posts in police, education, health and other issues.

Apex committee decides KP will ask centre to fund tribal region’s uplift, judicial system

They approved the facilitation of the extension of judicial system to the newly merged districts observing after the repeal of Article 247 of the Constitution, those areas have become part of the province and therefore, the existing laws would be applicable to the newly-merged districts.

The participants decided that the infrastructure development would be carried out in the region at an accelerated pace, while the federal government would be approached for resources to introduce uniform development and judicial systems.

Chief Minster Mahmood Khan told the meeting to focus on the developmental integration of the people, the time-tagged implementation process in line with the Supreme Court’s decision, and handling of administrative matters without waste of time to implement the apex court’s decision in letter and spirit.

The meeting discussed the “possible irritants to be created by the forces of status quo and thoroughly debated step by step and the long-term approach so that no vacuum prevailed both legally and administratively.”

It agreed to notify the extension of the judiciary to tribal districts, set up judicial complexes, induct the current 12,000 levies and 18,000 khasadar personnel into the police force, and hire 6,000 cops to be proportionately distributed among seven tribal districts.

The statement said the meeting agreed on the ‘sequential’ induction of police in merged districts and approved the skeleton staff for both the judiciary and police but decided that the police and home departments would sit together to work out modalities for the purpose.

The participants also approved the announcement of a full package covering developmental side of the Fata-KP merger and mainstreaming side for the rehabilitation and repatriation of people, the reconstruction of houses and provision of basic facilities, including healthcare and education.

The statement said there would be 7,600 new posts for merged areas.

It added that under the ‘quick impact’ plan, the developmental strategy would be accelerated; the health and education sector projects would be expeditiously completed, and deficiencies in health sector would be addressed.

The meeting was informed that the ban on recruitment for the posts of BPS-1-15 had been lifted, while appointments to those posts would be made at the earliest, while recruitment of posts of BPS-16 and above would be made through public service commission. The Sehat Insaf Card will be extended to 0.5 million families within one and a half months.

The chief minister ordered a survey to examine damages and administrative and other issues in the region to formulate a compensation package for the people.

The committee also agreed on the food package and assistance allowance to be managed by the relief department.

The chief minister directed the chief secretary to hold a meeting of health and education departments to find out the residents’ issues and make recommendations for his consideration.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2019