PESHAWAR, Feb 19: The fate of some 400 employees of the defunct Fata Development Corporation (FDC) hangs in the balance as the government has failed to devise terms and conditions for their regularisation despite a lapse of four years, sources said.
A proposal was under consideration to create ‘dying cadre’ under which the employees would remain in the same grade till death or retirement, said the sources.
Belonging to various grades, these employees had been accommodated in the industry, irrigation and technical sections of the civil secretariat and in tribal agencies without the facilities of pension and gratuity.
Established by the federal government in 1971 to carry out development projects in the remote region bordering Afghanistan, the FDC had to be abolished in 2002.
Employees of the defunct corporation complain that they were not given any promotion despite working in the same grade for 18 years.
Officials said that at a meeting held in Islamabad in May 2006, the president and the prime minister were briefed about the state of affairs in Fata. They had directed the NWFP governor to work out terms and conditions for the employees of the defunct corporation, they said.
However, the directives of the president and the prime minister were ignored. Instead, a meeting was held in July 2006 under the chairmanship of NWFP Chief Secretary Ijaz Ahmad Qureshi to look into the possibility of adjusting the eligible employees in the secretariat and its subsidiary sections.
“The employees of the defunct FDC having suitable qualification and experience as well as a satisfactory service record will be considered for appointment in the Fata Development Authority (FDA),” said an official note.
The terms and conditions of service would be determined by the board of director of the new authority, it said. Non-qualified staff of the defunct corporation would be offered golden handshake, it added.
Earlier, there was a proposal to adjust these employees against various posts in the governor’s secretariat. “Despite being capable and qualified, many of the employees have been suffering for the last many years, and the government has not been able to decide about their future,” said a senior official of the civil secretariat.
The sources said that the FDA had recently offered that it wanted to accommodate the qualified staff of the defunct FDC, but the civil secretariat turned down the request, reasoning that their terms and conditions had not been finalised.
The FDA then sent a summary to NWFP Governor Ali Mohammed Jan Aurakzai to allow the authority to recruit fresh staff.
An official said that in the light of a Supreme Court decision, services of these employees could not be transferred to the FDA. According to the court decision, employees of autonomous organisations do not fall in the purview of the Civil Servant Act.