Senate body decides FATA, SNEs will be prioritized in jobs

Senate Standing Committee on States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) has decided that 2292 FATA Special Needs Educations (SNEs) will be prioritized and those posts will be filled first.
The meeting of the committee was held under the Chairmanship of Senator Hilal-ur-Rehman here at the Parliament House on Wednesday. Which was attended among others by Senator Sajjad HussainTuri, Senator Aurangzeb, Senator Khanzada Khan, Senator Sitara Ayaz, Minister of State for SAFRON Ghalib Khan, Secretary SAFRON, Secretary Finance FATA Secretariat, CEO TESCO and DG Project FATA.
Secretary Finance FATA Secretariat told committee that these 2292 include 824 seats from educational sector, 616 from health sector and others in various areas including Archeology, transport, minerals, water, archives, housing etc.

He said that remaining SNEs more than 5500 SNEs will be taken up later as it is not feasible to consider all piled up SNEs at once.
The Committee was also told that for pay packages of regular employees in FATA, the secretariat follows the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government policy and for contractual employees, it follows the federal government policy.
Secretary Finance said that salaries are not stopped but there is some delay in determining rate of increments.
The Committee also discussed the criteria for recent appointments in TESCO. CEO TESCO Engr. Dr. Zakaullah Khan told the meeting that TESCO has low financial viability and hence against 300 required posts, only 38 were approved and advertised.
He said that it was mentioned that people with FATA domicile will be given preference and 18 out of 38 selected people are from FATA.
The Committee expressed concerns over low number of recruitment of people actually belonging to FATA and stressed upon the need to properly follow the ESTA code, which states that local people have to be given preference. The Committee will call Establishment Division, Secretary WAPDA in the next meeting.
Secretary Finance FATA Secretariat told the meeting that FATA Development Corporation established in 1970 was designed to work for development of FATA in skill, minerals, water sector and industry among others.

With the passage of time checks and balance was reduced while expenses increased and due to increasing number of complaints FATA DC was closed in 2002.
In 2002, FATA secretariat took over the control of areas which were previously under FATA DC. Later FATA Development Authority was established but it worked under the Secretariat.
The meeting was told that 35 schemes which were initiated at the time of FATA DC were merged with FATA Secretariat after 2002 and work on none of them was halted. It was also told that money which was in accounts of FATA DC in 2002 was later used to pay compensations and salaries/pensions to employees who are still serving in FATA. 808 million has been paid while 408 million is still in bank accounts for future use. The Committee asked the FATA Secretariat to have an audit conducted of these expenses.
The Committee was also given a briefing about the percentage of local staff belonging to FATA hired by NGOs working in FATA in coordination with United Nations. The Committee expressed satisfaction over the percentage which was stated to be 58%.