PESHAWAR, Sept 27: The NWFP government will continue with its policy of keeping ban on fresh recruitment during the current financial year in an attempt to bring down the size of the establishment and the fat salary bill at present claiming over 50 per cent of the total annual revenue receipts, sources said.
“All appointments would continue to be made on contract basis except where nature of the job required otherwise, after seeking views of the finance department and with the approval of the provincial governor,” an official document setting out recruitment guidelines says.
However, the departments of education and health would enjoy some liberty in the recruitment of schoolteachers, nurses, lecturers, medical technicians, doctors and lady health visitors in addition to computer-related staff in any of the departments — though under very specific conditions.
In this respect, the provincial education department would not recruit fresh staff before absorbing the over 1,760 employees it has in the pool of surplus staff.
Similarly, the establishment department of the provincial government has also been instructed to do the necessary homework to ascertain as to how many of the surplus employees could be adjusted against the computer-related vacancies — so that a minimum number of fresh appointments are made for the computer jobs (on contract basis).
The NWFP’s salary bill for the current financial year has been calculated at over Rs17.79bn, growing at an annual rate of 14.5 per cent.
On the other hand, the total revenue receipts of the province are not likely to be more than Rs37bn during the current financial year.
“The salary, pension and GP fund (jointly) account for 50 per cent of the revenue budget and the bill increases further when non-cash benefits such as housing, medical, transport and telephone are added,” states the provincial government’s white paper document for the current financial year.
The present government’s policy to keep ban on fresh recruitments is a continuation of the decision taken in the early years of the last decade.
In this respect, the previous provincial government had adopted a policy of abolishing all those posts which fell vacant due to the retirement of any of the employees and thus reduced hundreds of posts under its restructuring plan.
The same policy was allowed to stay in force by this government, with the result some 6,000 employees, belonging to different departments, were rendered surplus at the time the local government system was introduced in August last year.
Though all the surplus staff, said the sources, were duly adjusted, the ban on fresh recruitment had still been necessitated to control the growing requirements of the provincial government viz-a-viz payment of salaries to the over 274,000 employees.
The policy guidelines recently issued to all the district governments in the NWFP states: “No recruitment against vacant posts would be made except with the prior approval of the provincial governor”.