–WCLA comes up with absurd policy to select candidates
–NTS requested to waive off eligibility criteria for some candidates
–Authority ignores NTS scores in hiring process
LAHORE: Immense irregularities have been found in the recent recruitment of the Walled City of Lahore Authority (WCLA) as it recruited a number of candidates against the merit, Pakistan Today has learnt.
According to sources, higher authorities at the WCLA violated the criteria laid for recruitment in order to oblige their blue-eyed candidates. They revealed that the authorities paved the way for their appearance in the NTS recruitment tests for the positions of solid waste supervisor and other positions.
The WCLA had advertised its jobs to fill 137 vacancies on 44 posts through National Testing Service (NTS) in February this year. These jobs included the posts of deputy directors, assistant directors, supervisors of different departments, security staff and sweepers from basic pay scale of 18 to 1.
According to the job advertisement, every candidate had to apply through NTS in compliance with other directions and conditions of the WCLA. The NTS carried out the tests for the said posts on March 24, 25 and 26 of this year and the result was provided to the WCLA management.
“Many departments or institutes seek candidates through NTS and mostly consider the candidates who obtain over 50 marks, while a candidate below 50 marks is considered fail,” they said adding that WCLA recruited even those who obtained 30 marks in the NTS test.
Along with non-compliance with the NTS score criteria, the WCLA also recruited people who were not even eligible for the job on the basis of the criteria mentioned in its own advertisement. A person named Mazhar Abbas was hired at the post of solid waste supervisor even though he was over-age.
“This is a matter of grave concern that a person appears in the test and then gets the job despite the fact he does not meet the criteria,” sources said and added that Mazhar ranked at 28th place among 37 candidates appeared for the said post.
Moreover, sources revealed that authorities ignored the toppers of the NTS result and recruited those who obtained 21, 30, 31 and 39 marks.
NTS CEO Dr Sherzada Khan told Pakistan Today that the WCLA management requested NTS to allow some candidates to appear in the test who were rejected earlier as they couldn’t meet the eligibility criteria.
He further said the request had to be complied with as the NTS and WCLA had signed an MoU in this regard.
WCLA Director Shahid Nadeem rejected these claims, saying everyone was hired on merit. He said the WCLA had changed its policy of hiring the toppers and a new policy was devised for the selection criteria. According to the new policy, if there were four seats among 40 candidates, instead of selecting the candidates with higher scores, the authority would divide them into four sub-groups (as number of seats are four), and out of each of these sub-groups, one candidate would be selected for the post.
The director failed to answer when asked about the selection of candidates who could not meet the criteria advertised in newspapers.
The selection criteria, however, makes no sense as there would be no need for NTS tests if candidates are selected on random criteria.