PESHAWAR: The Pakistan Forest Institute (PFI) has been turned into a grazing ground by bureaucracy, who seldom let lose a chance to milk the cow and oblige those at the helm of affairs.
The country’s premier education and research institute has been functioning without a director general since 2011.
Any senior bureaucrat, who is posted the environment secretary, also retains the position of the PFI director general as additional charge.
Instead of focusing on academic activities, they (bureaucrats) try to appease the high-ups and politicians by appointing their nominees to various posts, giving them vehicles and other incentives. Recently, the additional chief secretary, who has now been repatriated to the centre, kept the post of the DG, too.
The PFI established in 1947 was entrusted to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after the 18th Constitutional Amendment. The DG’s post has been kept vacant since 2011 and the environment secretary is given the additional charge.
Officials said the PFI had become a recreation centre for the bureaucrats, who assumed this additional charge.
The institute surrounded by maple, pine and olive trees adjacent to the Agriculture University had become a recreation centre, where bureaucrats holding this additional charge came just to shed fatigue.
The post of the DG has been declared ‘schedule post’ under which ‘any suitable officer from amongst the PCS/MS/PAS officers of BS-20/21 as DG.’
Please high-ups, politicians by employing their nominees, giving them vehicles, other facilities
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan had announced that the PFI would be given the status of the university, but the bureaucracy is playing own cards.
Another notification was issued on January 6, 2016 for the creation of three posts of the additional director general of BPS-20 in different disciplines and one post of director (biodiversity) of BPS-19.
“The appointment of non-technical person as DG will not be in the interest of the institute, which is already in crisis due to shortage of teaching staff and financial resources,” said one official.
After the Peshawar High Court’s intervention, the government posted the senior most academician of the PFI, Syed Hakeem Shah, as the DG of the Institute.
However, a legal battle between the government and the PFI teachers is still underway.
According to the documents, whose copies are available with Dawn, former ACS Hammad Owais Agha had appointed 22 employees to various posts in the institute on contractual basis in 2014.
Of the total 22 appointed employees, 12 belonged to Nowshera, hometown of Chief Minister Pervez Khattak.
Interestingly, PFI deputy director (technical) issued an order on January 4 and relieved all contractual employees before the ACS quit the office of the DG. These employees were appointed to the posts of gardeners, naib qasid, lower division clerks and assistants.
Officials claimed that all these appointments were illegal because no code of formalities including the publication of advertisement in newspapers, formation of a selection committee, and the holding of tests and interviews of the candidates was observed.
They said the forestry, environment and wildlife department had imposed a ban on all kinds of postings and transfers in the attached formation of forestry, environment and wildlife in February 2015 but despite that, many people were posted to the PFI.
Four people were appointed on the recommendation of a high-up of the provincial anti-corruption body and an MPA of the ruling party from Peshawar.
Sources said the MPA in question had sought details of the fresh appointees through the Right to Information Commission following which his (MPA’s) two persons were accommodated in the PFI.
On the recommendation of anti-corruption establishment director Ziaullah Toru, a house was allotted to his driver, Mohammad Ramzan, at the PFI Colony. The house was also renovated at the expenses of the PFI, said an official memo.
Two vehicles including Vego A-3982 and AA-2398 were handed over to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz MNA Mrs Tahira Bukhari along with a driver, Khushdil.
She is also provincial president of the MPL-N women wing. The institute bore fuel charges of the two vehicles allotted to the parliamentarian. Similarly, her driver also drew travel allowance from the PFI’s account.
Sources said the institute’s officers club was converted into a daycare centre despite the fact that only two women employees had been working in the PFI.
They said furniture, toys and other equipment were provided to the centre.
Hammad Owais Agha was not available to comments on the allegations.
Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2016