FAISALABAD, Nov 6 The Faisalabad Electricity Supply Company (Fesco) is again interviewing about 500 candidates who passed the written test and interview eight months ago and are awaiting appointment letters. The step is aimed at accommodating Pakistan People's Party men, sources told Dawn on Thursday.

Fesco advertised more than 1,000 posts of assistant linemen, lower and upper division clerks, watchmen, telephone clerks and office boys and conducted written tests and interviews about eight months ago to fill these posts.

The company prepared a list of successful candidates and called them for interviews. The names of the successful candidates were sent to the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) for its permission to issue them appointment letters, but Pepco stopped Fesco from completing the recruitment process, saying the government had banned all types of recruitments.

Succumbing to Pepco pressure, the sources said, Fesco reversed the entire process and told the successful candidates to tread the path again that they treaded about eight months ago. Now the political pressure has enabled even those to take the test who failed earlier.

The sources said that in interview the candidates for technical posts were being asked easy and general questions instead of questions relating to their subject.

They said the interviewers' panel was awarding numbers to the candidates according to their own sweet will instead of merit. The entire interviewing process was a mockery of Wapda's recruitment system. PPP city president Mehmoodul Hassan Dar said such recruitments, if any, would earn the party a bad name.

A Fesco official said company officials did not want to see the people in distribution companies being recommended by PPP leaders. “We are trying to select best suitable candidates. It seems we will not see any success and long and short of the episode will be the selection of blue-eyed people.”

He said abolition of written test by Pepco had paved the way for appointment of ineligible people on PPP men's recommendation.

Sources said a delegation of union office bearers met Fesco chief Tanvir Safdar and protested against appointment of recommended candidates. Safdar told the delegates to keep silent, assuring them the government would not touch the 20 per cent job quota allocated for employees' children.

The sources said the company knew the government had given parliamentarians 45 per cent quota in jobs, but nothing was in black and white so far to substantiate this argument.

However, they said, abolition of written test in the name of security threats was enough to understand the government's intentions. They said that interviews would be completed by Nov 7 and results would be submitted to Pepco for final approval.

Fesco Director General for Human Resource Mohammad Ashraf said the company neither prepared a list of successful candidates nor send it to Pepco. He said no candidate was declared successful after test and interview.