PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has planned to legislate to regularise the services of several hundreds of contractual employees hired years ago for development projects in the merged tribal districts.

Officials told Dawn that the proposed KP (Regularisation of Services of Employees of Erstwhile Federally Administrated Tribal Areas) Act, 2021, has been forwarded by the law and parliamentary affairs department to the assembly’s secretariat for presentation in the house for approval.

The proposed law provides for the regularisation of hundreds of employees working in 121 projects executed by the erstwhile Fata secretariat, whose control was secured by the KP government after the merger of the region with the province.

Section 1 of the bill says, “Notwithstanding anything contained in any law or rules, the employees appoint on contract basis, against project posts in the erstwhile Fata and holding such project posts till the commencement of this act, shall be deemed to have been validly appointed on regular basis from the commencement of this act, subject to verification of their qualifications and other qualifications by concerned department.”

Law dept forwards bill on matter to PA secretariat

Under the proposed law, a committee headed by the secretary of the department concerned and including head of attached department, representatives of the establishment, administration, finance, planning and development departments and deputy secretary of the relevant department will be formed to scrutinise credentials of all project employees before the issuance of letters of service regularisation to them.

It also laid down conditions for the regularisation that will not affect the service promotion quota of all employees. At the same time, the contractual employees will possess the same qualifications and experience as required for regular posts.

For eligibility to regularisation, the contractual employees should have not resigned from service on account ofmisconduct on account of misconduct, inefficiency, or any other grounds before the enforcement of the proposed law. The names of the regularised employees will be publishedin the official gazette afterwards.

The bill said all employees, whose services would be regularised under the proposed law, would be junior to all existing civil servants belonging to the same services or cadre as well as those recommended by the provincial public service commission or relevant departmental selection committeesbefore the proposed law took effect.

At the start of the last month, the establishment department had moved a summary for the regularisation of the services of these employees to the chief minister’s secretariat for tabling before the provincial cabinet for approval.

However, the chief minister ordered the summary’s approval through circulation among cabinet members,which they did accordingly.

In June last year, the chief minister had directed all government departments for continuation of the services of the project employees until a decision is made on regularisation through an act of the assembly.

Mr Mahmood had said a note had moved to the establishment department for regularisation of the contractual project employees, proposing that the services of project employees of ex-Fata should be regularised on the pattern of the KP Regularisation of Services Act, 2018, under which 5,000 such employees of the provincial government got their employment regularised.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2021