PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Economic Zones Development and Management Company’s (EZDMC) human resource committee has recommended the termination of the company’s recently-appointed manager (legal), declaring the process of his appointment ‘non-competitive and non-transparent’.

Minutes of the meeting available with Dawn declare that the human resource sub-committee of the company’s board of directors met on Feb 28 and scrutinised the appointment of Zair Nawaz in light of the board’s directions.

The documents note that the post of the company’s manager (legal) was advertised in July 2018 and after the short-listing of applicants, interviews were held on Aug 20, 2018, by a five-member selection committee, including three internal and two external experts.

Company’s BoD to decide legal manager’s fate

Six candidates appeared in the interview and the interview results showed that Mr Zair Nawaz was No 3 on merit list.

The EZDMC’s chief executive officer, the head of the selection committee, didn’t attend the meeting due to the death of a relative.

The HR committee noted that the merit list after the first interview was not signed by the selection committee members, while the company’s executive management decided on Sept 10 to re-interview top five candidates, who underwent interview by another selection committee, including five company officials and two external experts.

The minutes note that compiled results of selection committee marking for the second interview was available on records; however, company chief provided individual marks sheets of evaluators

“Non-compilation of marks sheet in a single signed document by the selection committee members was a grave shortcoming in the process observed by the HR Committee,” it read, adding that it was surprising why not even a single member of the selection committee demanded on record that the process should be completed.

The committee observed that the marking criteria for first interview appeared to be different from the second interview’s as mark sheets of both of them were made in different formats and that in the absence of records, it was not possible to correlate the results of both interviews under the uniform criteria.

The minutes also pointed out that there was an indication of the weightage (value) given to first interview in final rating of the candidates as in first interview, 40 per cent weightage was given to interview and 60 per cent for initial screening.

“In the second interview, no such weightage information was available,” the minutes read, adding that the HR Committee observed that whole selection process seemed arbitrary, non-transparent and highly non-professional for the reasons mentioned above.

The committee also noted that conducting second interview made the whole process doubtful and non-transparent.

“If the CEO was not available for the first interview, then the interview should have been postponed or the merit of the first interview should have been considered final.

“The process of the legal manager’s selection, especially the decision to hold second interview and applying arbitrary and random criterion, made the complete process non-transparent and non-competitive.”

The committee recommended to the HR committee to terminate the employment contract of manager Zair Nawaz under Clause 5.1 of the employment contract and said the process had to be re-initiated after a fresh advertisement and following a notified selection process.

The committee also took up the sacking of the company’s two senior officials, including HR manager Atique Raja, in Dec last year and issued a strong rebuke to the management over layoffs saying the ‘process was arbitrary and reactionary and lacked professionalism.’

It, however, did not restore the sacked employees.

An official of the EZDMC said following the company’s Article of Association, any recommendations of the HR committee would be placed before the board of the directors for review and appropriate decision.

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2019