PESHAWAR, Aug 15: The NWFP’s directorate of prosecution cannot operate efficiently because of alleged illegal appointments to key positions and a lack of proper service structure.

Background interviews with a couple of officials suggest that the directorate — set up through the Prosecution Service (Constitution, Function and Powers) Ordinance 2004 — was empowered to play a positive role in the criminal justice system.

The officials, however, said the body was yet to assert its authority because the government didn’t consider it a priority area and its affairs were being run on an ad hoc basis.

Citing the progress made in other provinces, they said that in Punjab and Sindh, the provincial governments had set up separate prosecution departments, while in the Frontier province it worked under the administrative control of the home and tribal affairs department.

The two provincial governments upgraded the posts of prosecutors about two years ago, but things were moving at a very slow pace in the NWFP, causing unrest among the prosecutors.

A senior official conceded that not much work had been carried out in the NWFP in this regard, but he said a phase-wise strategy was in place.

According to him, 84 posts of assistant prosecutors and seven posts of district prosecutors had so far been upgraded from grade 14 to 16 and 18 to 19, respectively.

Appointments to some key posts had also been made in violation of rules, causing a lot of resentment among the prosecutors.

According to the rules, only public prosecutors could be posted as legal directors at the directorate, but currently the post was occupied by an officer inducted from the surplus pool.

Similarly, the government had re-employed a retired public prosecutor as administration director in the directorate, in BPS-18, which violated the NWFP Civil Servants (Appointment, Promotion and Transfer) Rules of 1989.

According to the rules, the chief minister was the appointing authority for grade 18 and above while in the case of re-employment, the approval of the governor, being the next higher authority, was required.