KARACHI: The provincial assembly was informed on Tuesday that all officials posted as mukhtiarkars by the chief minister by giving them exemption from passing the requisite departmental examination for the post had been reverted to their original substantive posts.

Furnishing a statement and replies to lawmakers’ written and verbal queries during the Question Hour session in the house, Revenue and Relief Minister Makhdoom Mehboob Zaman said that no official exempted from the departmental examination was posted as a mukhtiarkar throughout the province.

“All the mukhtiarkars, posted throughout the province, are eligible as they have passed the Revenue Qualifying Examination, held by Sindh Public Service Commission,” he said, adding that the exempted officials were reverted in the wake of a Supreme Court judgement.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf member Khurram Sher Zaman had submitted a written question to the revenue minister to ascertain if the apex court’s directive on devising a mechanism to replace the incompetent and ineligible officials with competent and eligible officials in the revenue department was carried out.

In reply to a supplementary question asked by Grand Democratic Alliance member Nusrat Sehar Abbasi, the minister said that the chief minister using his discretionary powers had exempted some officials of the department from passing Revenue Qualifying Examination and appointed them directly.

However, he added, all those ‘exemptees’ were reverted on the Supreme Court’s directives and presently, all the mukhtiarkars posted throughout Sindh were eligible.

Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan members Mohammad Hussain Khan and Javed Hanif contended that the chief minister could not relax the rules to exempt someone from passing the necessary examination to get a post.

Mr Hussain said there was obviously some illegality or irregularity; that’s why the apex court had ordered that all exempted officials be reverted.

To this, the minister replied that the chief executive of the province could exercise his discretionary powers on any issue.

When PTI member Mohammad Shabbir Qureshi asked Mr Zaman to inform the house about details and names of those who were exempted and posted as mukhtiarkars, he evaded the question saying: “It is a fresh question. We will provide all the details when the question is asked”.

Asking a supplementary question, Mr Hussain said that a “mafia” was operating in the city in the name of ‘Goth Abad’. He said that the city’s thousands of acres had been looted by this mafia which deliberately established goths on state land.

“There are many areas of the city which are declared as industrial areas but the goths have been established there,” he added.

The minister said that the provincial government would not tolerate encroachment on state land. He also directed his secretary from the floor of the house to take strict action if there were irregularities as pointed out by the MQM-P lawmaker.

In reply to a supplementary question, Mr Zaman said that goths were regularised under The Sindh Goth-Abad Housing Scheme Act which was introduced in February 1987 with an objective to provide institutional arrangement for undertaking regularisation of the villages and confer proprietary/ownership rights to the existing occupants as well as shelterless persons in the rural areas of the province.

“Overall 36,566 villages have been identified under the scheme as per standard definition of the village and so far 12,912 villages have been regularised,” the minister added.

Separately, he said that the Board of Revenue and relief department did not disburse any aid to malnourished children.

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2019