PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has initiated multiple reforms to strengthen Educational Testing and Evaluation Agency (Etea) and enable it to meet the testing requirements for all public sector recruitments.

An official statement issued here on Wednesday said that Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, who chaired a meeting, agreed in principle to the proposed reform plan for restructuring the testing agency and streamlining all its operational matters. The meeting discussed the reform plan.

The chief minister directed the authorities concerned to complete all prerequisites and initiatives timely so that the plan could be implemented in letter and spirit. He said that Etea was the lone public sector testing agency and needed to be strengthened in accordance with the needs of modern era.

He said that implementation of the reform plan would provide all time solution to the issues of testing and evaluation in the province and the provincial government would not require any private testing agency for the purpose.

CM orders timely completion of all projects

The meeting was informed that multiple reform initiatives were underway to strengthen Etea that would be presented in the upcoming meeting of its Board of Governors for final approval.

It was informed that keeping in view the major functions of the agency, necessary reforms were proposed for reorganisation of the existing structure of Etea whereas hiring of IT experts and other staff was also in progress.

In order to strengthen the legal framework of the agency, drafts of financial and service regulations have been prepared whereas work on other legal reforms is in final stages including designing job description for each position, formulating performance appraisal mechanism and development of standard operating procedure.

Proposed training calendar for capacity building of human resources and a plan to upgrade and procure technical resources would also be presented in the upcoming meeting of the Board of Governors.

In order to set up digital printing press, tender has been floated for procurement of sophisticated digital printing machine. This initiative will enhance its printing capacity from 5,000 papers set per day to 50,000 to 60,000 papers set per day.

The meeting was informed that online requisition system for clients and ticket management system for candidates were also being prepared to ensure efficient service delivery. It was informed that implementation of online profile management system of all candidates was started whereas preparation of databank and ‘system-based paper generator’ was in progress.

The statement said that computer-based testing system would be lunched as pilot project at the end of September. Work on digital payment and receipt system, paperless office management and biometric verification system through Nadra would also be completed by November this year.

In order to strengthen monitoring regime, monitoring teams comprising officers from higher education department and representatives of other client departments and inspection teams would be deployed at test centres.

The meeting was informed that more than 7,000 candidates participated in entrance test for engineering and more than 300,000 attended test for recruitment against 6,750 vacancies in 39 different departments.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2021