LARKANA, Aug 7: Members of All Pakistan Clerks Association (APCA) have called for regularisation of service of 900 employees recruited on contract basis from 1998 to 2004 in the Sindh Social Welfare Department’s family planning section.

The association’s president, Peeral Dayo said the ministry of population welfare had in a letter dated March 18, 2006, to concerned secretaries of Punjab, the NWFP and Sindh directed regularisation of contract employees. Punjab and the NWFP governments regularised services of all contract employees, but in Sindh all the matter hit snags.

Services and General Administration Department Sindh in a letter to Population Welf-are Department on dated April 3, 2007 suggested that the ‘contract’ employees could only be regularised on the pattern of regularising ad hoc doctors which needed the chief minister’s approval under rule 45 of the Rules of Business.

Population Welfare Department in a letter to Services and General Administration dated July 18, 2007 said the finance department’s approval was not mandatory for regularising services of 900 employees. This was federally funded department and all posts were pensionable.

A summery for regularisation was sent to the Sindh chief minister on April 3, but still lying with him for signature, he said. Peeral Dayo regretted that despite removing all impediments the fate of 900 contract employees in Sindh was hanging in the balance.

He urged regularisation on humanitarian grounds as low cadre employees (B-1 to B-11) were quite worried about their future.

He said on one hand 900 contract employees were waiting for regularisation while on the other Sindh government had begun dishing out services on political consideration.

He said of planning to file constitutional petition in Sindh High Court against it and urged the leader of opposition in Sindh Assembly Nisar Khuhro, Rasool Bakhsh Palijo, Bashir Qureshi, Dr Qadir Magsi and others to raise their voice against injustice.