ISLAMABAD: Senate’s Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat was informed on Thursday that six officials of the K-Electric had been removed from their services for their failure to observe safety protocols which led to the death of some person in Karachi a few months ago.

A meeting of the committee was held in the Parliament House on Thursday with Senator Rana Maqbool Ahmad in the Chair. It discussed the K-Electric accident, which occurred due to non-observance of safety protocols and caused the deaths.

The issue was raised by Senator Engr. Rukhsana Zuberi.

National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) chairman Tauseef H. Farooqi informed the committee that all six KE officials found involved in the lapse had been sacked.

Senator Zuberi told the committee that the KE did not pay any compensation to those injured in the incident. The Nepra chairman noted that the compensation was not paid because the injuries were not of severe nature.

The committee chairman appeared distressed over the recent incident of transformer blast in a Lahore area (Kahna), which claimed lives of five persons. He directed the Nepra chairman to conduct an inquiry into matter and submit the report in the next meeting of the committee.

The committee also took up the matter of ownership of different properties/hotels of Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) raised by Senator Mohsin Aziz on Nov 16, 2021.

PTDC managing director Aftabur Rehman Rana informed the committee that the corporation had shifted its goal from managing hotels to provincial coordination and promotion and publicity of tourism after promulgation of the 18th Constitutional Amendment.

PTDC was planning to handover all its properties located in different provinces to the provincial government concerned with the aim of ensuring that 90pc revenues of these properties should go to the provincial government concerned and 10pc be retained by the PTDC, he said. In order to fulfill this, four out of six properties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had been handed over to its government and negotiations with Balochistan government were under way. However, Sindh government was refusing to pay 10pc to the PTDC, he added.

Committee chairman Rana Maqbool was of view that the surveillance trip should be organised to visit these properties and examine its condition physically.

The committee also considered a public petition regarding provision of disabled persons’ quota in BPS-17 posts in federal departments. Additional secretary of the Establishment Division informed the committee that the Disabled Persons Ordinance, 1981 and the ICT Rights of Person with Disabilities Act 2020 provided 2pc quota for disabled persons. Rana Maqbool stressed that disability of such a person should also be kept in mind while assigning different positions to them.

The committee discussed a question whether officers of National Assembly and Senate could be the posted as commissioner, deputy commissioner or chief secretaries of four provinces. Senator Walid Iqbal cited the Civil Service of Pakistan Rules and Service Rules of Provincial Civil Services, 1954, which say that only officers of Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) and Provincial Management Service can be assigned the positions commissioner and DC.

Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2022