KARACHI, Aug 14: An inordinate delay in the announcement of recruitment test results of those seeking to join the Sindh health department has not only caused considerable unrest among the candidates but has also called into question the transparency of the entire exercise.

Commenting on the slow pace of the recruitment process, a number of frustrated candidates, who had appeared in the written tests for jobs in BPS-5 to BPS-15, said that they had taken the test in the first week of June and were still awaiting results.

They said that after this interviews of the successful candidates would be conducted. A candidate said that the applicants had lost faith in the government’s promises regarding eradication of unemployment amid reports about alleged use of political influence in the recruitment process.

Another candidate added that it had already been decided by the political and administrative establishment that a ‘handpick job offer formula’ would be applied as agreed between the coalition partners in the provincial government, bypassing the established norms of recruitment.

He said that recruitment in the government sector had now become a political affair and once the political people in the power corridors did not see any possibility of pushing in their affiliates they put the employment proceedings on the backburner.According to official data, the provincial health department received about 123,000 applications against hundreds of posts ranging from BPS-5 to 15 in two phases since 2005. About 26,500 candidates appeared in the tests held for two categories ie BPS-5 to BPS-11 and BPS-12 to BPS-15, at various centres at the district levels.

The written tests were held on June 3 in which a maximum of 2,649 candidates appeared from Hyderabad followed by Naushehroferoze (2,452), Nawabshah (1,719) and 714 candidates took the tests in Karachi.

In early June, the secretary of the provincial health department, Mumtazur Rehman Khan, had told Dawn that matters were being expedited for BPS-5 to BPS-15 recruitments and it was likely that appointment letters to applicants against various posts, including the technical ones, would be issued by the end of June.

The Sindh health department has also failed to announce a new date for written tests for appointments of doctors and nurses on a three-year contract. The tests were earlier scheduled for July 30.

The health department received about 7,000 applications for about 1,000 vacancies in general and specialised cadres of doctors and the nursing cadre for healthcare units across the province. According to insiders, the officials are working purely in line with the directives from their high-ups in bits and pieces.

‘No foul play’