PESHAWAR: Several graduates have moved the Peshawar High Court for one-year age relaxation in the Provincial Management Service (PMS) examination due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a joint petition, Jalaluddin and four other PMS aspirants also requested the court to direct the respondents, including provincial government and KP Public Service Commission, to count the Jan 1, 2020, cut-off date for the PMS exam advertisement for ascertaining the age.
A panel of lawyers comprising Aamir Ali Khan, Shahid Ali Shah and Kamran Jamal Khan will defend the petitioners.
The respondents in the petition are the provincial government through its chief secretary, secretary of the establishment department, chairman of the KP Public Service Commission, and director examination of the commission.
The petitioners said the outbreak of Covid-19 in early 2020 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation on Mar 11.
They said the pandemic had affected 218 countries around the world and as of Dec, it had infected 65 million people and killed 1.5 million people.
The petitioners said the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) declared that damages to the world’s major economies were four times more than the 2009 global financial crisis.
Petitioners also tell PHC exam hasn’t been held since 2018
They claimed that the virus had also affected Pakistan badly and so far nearly 450,000 cases of coronavirus and over 9,080 related deaths had been recorded.
The petitioners said the PMS exam was a competitive one on the pattern of CSS exam and that was conducted by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Public Service Commission for the recruitment of officers in the establishment department.
They said the candidates were required to attempt 12 papers in total in the exam, so it needed thorough study and consistent hard work.
The petitioners said the laid-down procedure for the recruitment of PMS officers showed that the establishment department sent the requisition to the KPPSC, which after analysing the same announced the number of seats, to be filled through the PMS exam, through the leading national daily newspapers.
They said the age limit for the PMS examination was 30 years for the candidates belonging to settled areas and 32 years for the government employees and for the candidates of the backward areas as notified by the Provincial Government.
The petitioners claimed that they had been waiting for the PMS examination since 2018 but so far it had not been conducted.
The petitioners claim that on Dec 1, 2020, the officials of establishment department confirmed that the department had sent the requisition for 92 post of PMS Officers to KPPSC and the commission would analyze the requisition and would announce the vacancy through an advertisement.
They feared that the announcement might take a bit longer and by the time the commission announces the vacancies of the PMS, the cut-off date will be somewhere after 15-20 day from the date of the advertisement, which will render many candidates ineligible they got over-aged during the Covid-19 lockdown and delay in holding the exam.
The petitioners contended that many candidates studied for PMS examination for years and invested a lot of their time and money for the preparation of this examination.
They said one-year relaxation in age limit for upcoming jobs should be awarded to the unemployed youth of the province.
Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2020
