PESHAWAR: The employees of Fata secretariat have expressed concerns over delay in approval of their service structure and urged the government to give them one-step promotion and merge the secretariat in the province.

In a statement here on Monday, they asked the government to avoid sending 113 employees to the surplus pool.

They said that Fata secretariat should be regularised on pattern of the rest of departments.

The employees’ representatives Farooq Khan, Hanif Khan, Shaukat and Zubair Khan said that the workers had been demanding service structure for the last 15 years but successive governments were reluctant to pay attention to them.

They said that the employees were requesting the officials concerned to approve their promotion but they were least bothered to accept the demands. They said that a sense of deprivation was increasing among the Fata secretariat workers.

The workers complained that government had assured them of solution to their issues after the merger of Fata with the province but it failed to fulfil its commitment.

They said that Supreme Court had already approved a petition of the employees of the finance and planning departments in that regard many years ago but they were still waiting for the upgradation.

“We have one option to start protest demonstrations outside Governor’s House if our demands are not accepted immediately,” said the workers.

Published in Dawn, March 26th, 2019