ISLAMABAD: Students and parents have expressed serious concern over the shortcomings of the National Testing Service (NTS) and other similar services, and complained about overcharging by the officials concerned.
The government departments and ministries of the country depended on these services, including NTS, Balochistan Testing Service (BTS), Open Testing Service (OTS), Pakistan Testing Service (PTS) and Sindh Testing Service (STS), to hire people for different posts.
Talking to reporters, the applicants said that the NTS management was charging Rs 600 to 1,000 from each candidate on every test which added to the financial woes of young people.
A student from International Islamic University Islamabad Masters in Business Administration programme, namely Abdul Qayyum, said that students had severe reservations regarding all national testing services which were only minting money under the guise of conducting tests. He claimed that these services selected candidates on the basis of favouritism and nepotism.
Another student from the Federal Urdu University Raja Arsalan Ahmad said that PTS did not had any proper rechecking system and a lot of irregularities had been committed by them over the years.
Among the five testing services that are active in the country, NTS is the pioneer, with 14 years of experience in the field and had a widespread system throughout the country.
When contacted by reporters, NTS Corporate Responsibility Department Head Madiha Aslam said that NTS was totally based on integrity and reliability as it had a long experience in holding and screening tests. She claimed that NTS had 600,000 different types of content as it was conducting different kinds of customised tests since 2003.
Madiha said that, “NTS has the capacity of evaluating more than 100,000 candidates in a single day”, while adding that the service was going to introduce bio-metric system in collaboration with the National Database and Registration Authority in order to stop the use of fake CNICs.
On the other hand, OTS Director Faheem Ahmad also denied any wrong doing on their part and said that they were providing affordable testing service to students within a limited time.
