KARACHI, June 6: The Sindh health department got a poor response to its recruitment scheme as just 22 per cent of the applicants turned up for a written test pertaining to the employment in BPS-5 to 15. The test was conducted in all districts of Sindh, excluding Khairpur, on Sunday last.
Sindh Health Secretary Mumtazur Rehman Khan told Dawn that test at Khairpur could not be held due to some reservations expressed by the nazim concerned. A decision about the holding of the test would now be taken by the chief minister, he added.
According to the official data, the department had received about 123,000 applications in response to the offer of employment in two phases.
Admit cards of 55,455 candidates were prepared for the tests which were given under one question paper each in the two major categories, i.e. BPS-5 to 11 (A) and BPS-12 to 15 (B). However, about 26,613 candidates appeared in test.
A health department official in Karachi said that while about 15,000 valid applications were in pending since 2005, another 500 to 700 were received in response to the advertisement placed in newspapers a couple of month back. “We prepared about 1,700 admit cards but a good number of these was not collected by the candidates concerned,” he said.
Statistics show that the total number of applicants at Karachi was 100,000 but 1,600 admit cards were prepared and 714 candidates took up test in the BPS-5 to 11 category and another 104 in BPS-12 to 15 category.
When views of candidates and officials were collected, it appeared that job seekers had lost trust in the government’s announcements and the process of recruitment. “The government service has now become a political affair,” said a candidate, adding that when the parties in power could not find a room for their recommended candidates, they would either devise a recruitment process or place their own list of candidates, ignoring all merit and tests.
According to the health secretary, no policy decision has yet been taken regarding assessment of the answer scripts of the tests held on June 3, whether there will be a centralised assessment at Karachi or at district level.
Scripts are being gathered at one place, but a procedure will be implemented only in the line of the directives from the chief minister. He hoped that appointment letters against various posts, including the technical ones, will be issued by the last week of June.