ISLAMABAD, Feb 22: Federal Minister for Professional and Technical Training Riaz Hussain Pirzada has convened a meeting of the board of governors of National Education Foundation (NEF) to discuss alleged irregularities in the organisation, it has been learnt.

According to documents available with Dawn, former managing director Kamran Zafar promoted 19 contractual officers working with a project called 'Establishment and operation of basic education community schools in the country" against rules on July 1, 2010.

Under the rules, the contractual officers could not be promoted, said sources.

Out of the officers, eight were promoted from basic pay scale (BPS) 16 to 17, nine from BPS-17 to BPS-18, one officer each was promoted from BPS-18 to 19 and BPS-19 to 20.

Later, a federal audit team pointed out the illegal promotions and directed the authority concerned to reverse them. As a result, Mr Zafar wrote to the planning commission admitting that a number of contractual officers/officials were promoted by him and during his predecessor's incumbency in disregard to the rules which prohibited the promotion of contractual employees.

He maintained that the rules dawned upon him after the decision was made. So he requested the commission to either take direct action to reverse the illegal promotions or allow him to do it.

Later, he demoted the officers/officials through office orders.

An officer of the NEF requesting not to be quoted said: "Those officers/officials who were promoted were so influential that none of them could be reverted."

Besides, four of them were even promoted further. An assistant director (BPS-17), who was on contract, presented herself before the Supreme Court as director NEF, which is a permanent post in BPS-20, just to position herself for the same slot whenever there was an opportunity in the future, he added.

When NEF was handed over to the Ministry of Professional and Technical Training after devolution of the Ministry of Education, some of the officers who were aware of what had happened in the past brought the matter into the notice of the federal minister and requested him to take action against the officers involved in irregularities," he said.

Besides, the planning commission also showed concerns over the irregularities in NEF being funded through the Public Sector Development Programme. A letter was also sent to member social sector on February 15 to further probe the issue, said sources. Managing Director NEF Nasir Hayat said office orders regarding demotion of the officials were not placed in their files nor they were intimated, adding the employees have been drawing salaries of the next grades for the last seven months. "I am not competent enough to say anything on the issue," he said.

The minister, Riaz Pirzada, who is also chairman of the NEF, told Dawn that he had been informed about the issue in NEF and the board of governors would discuss all the matters in its meeting next month.

The minister said everything would be investigated.