LAHORE, July 20: The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Railways has been unable to meet since May 13 to primarily discuss reasons for appointment of junior officers in place of seniors and filling up of posts from outside the organization. “At least three scheduled meetings of the 18-member committee have been postponed so far,” a member of the committee told Dawn on Wednesday when asked when the NA body would initiate a probe into the Sarhad accident.
In a statement on July 13, committee chairman Sardar Tufail Ahmad had assured the aggrieved families that the NA body would hold an inquiry into the fatal accident and make the report public.
The meeting had to be postponed on May 13 for want of railways ministry’s brief on the three-point agenda, according to the member who wished not to be named.
The first item on the agenda was “reasons for posting of a BS-19 officer not belonging to the railways as workshop divisional superintendent against a BS-20 post and his experience in running workshop on identical unit of the capacity as that of workshop, Lahore.” Copies of advertisement, criteria of selection and names of the selection committee were also sought.
The second item on the agenda reminded the railways ministry to provide seniority list “starting from the top as discussed in the last committee’s meeting and reasons for appointing a junior general manager in place of seniors.”
“Reasons for filling up of posts from outside the railways, particularly when railways employees are available with better performance and also reasons for the filling up of posts from outside through advertisements despite the directive of the standing committee not to do so,” was the third item on the agenda.
Committee members are Minister of State for Railways Ishaq Khan Khakwani, Dev Das, Begum Shahnaz Sheikh, Nasim Akhtar Chaudhry, Dr Nisar Ahmad, Anwar Bhutto, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, Farooq Azam Malik, Qazi Hameedullah Khan, Abdus Sattar Afghani, Chaudhry Asim Nazir, Tasneem Qureshi, Sahibzada Mahmood Sultan, Syed Gulzar Sibtain Shah, Saeed Virk and Pir Muhammad Shah Khagga. Railways Minister Shamim Haider is the ex-officio member.