Other exam boards also likely to suffer; HED secretary says
approval of reference awaited
LAHORE
The post of chairman of Sahiwal Board of Intermediate & Secondary Education (BISE) has been vacant for over a month and no one has so far been given the charge to look after the board’s affairs.
For the last one month the examination board which caters to students of Sahiwal Division for their matriculation and intermediate level examinations and affiliation of public and private colleges of the Division has been facing a kind of “administrative crisis” in the absence of the top administrator.
As no one has been assigned even an additional charge to look after the post, the board’s employees are worried as to how they will get their salaries for the month of December 2016.
During the ongoing administrative crisis, which the government has so far failed to realise, a good gesture of interfaith harmony was witnessed when the board’s Muslim employees pooled their money for Christian employees so that they could celebrate Christmas without any worry. The board has over 10 Christian employees.
Sources said the Higher Education Department (HED) Punjab had moved a reference to the Search Committee much before the BISE Sahiwal Chairman Dr Anwaar Ahmad retired after attaining the age of superannuation on Nov. 27, 2016 to assign look after charge either to BISE Faisalabad Chairman or the Commissioner Sahiwal Division.
The sources said the reference for additional charge was sent as the Search Committee could not find a suitable candidate for the post despite twice conducting the interviews.
They added the reference was sent to the chief minister through the Chief Secretary Punjab Capt (r) Zahid Saeed who heads the Search Committee.
However so far no one has been assigned the additional charge.
The other members of the Search Committee are educationist Zafar Iqbal Qureshi, Additional Chief Secretary (ACS), AIG (Special Branch) and Secretary HED.
The sources further said BISE Sahiwal Secretary Dr Zulfiqar Ali Zaqib was a BS-19 officer and could be assigned the charge of the post as there are precedents in different exam boards.
It is pertinent to mention here that the Higher Education Department had also moved a reference to the Search Committee to initiate the process of appointment of Chairmen and Controller of Examinations at different boards as these posts would be vacant by March 2017. These include Chairmen at BISE Gujranwala, Sargodha, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi and Controller of Exams at BISE Sahiwal, Sargodha, Gujranwala, Multan and Faisalabad.
“Not just salaries. We are also concerned about the upcoming matriculation annual examinations 2017 to be held in the first week of March”, says a BISE Sahiwal official who wished to remain anonymous. He fears that if the government continues behaving the same way BISE Sahiwal will be in great trouble to conduct the exams.
It is pertinent to mention here that recently there was strong resentment among candidates of almost all the nine BISEs of Punjab for what they termed “unfair” marking of papers. Massive demonstrations were held in the provincial metropolis in this regard.
“We are also facing extreme problems in day to day affairs of the board as under the board’s governing law, financial powers rest with the chairman or anyone assigned to”, the official explains.
When contacted Secretary HED Capt (r) Nasim Nawaz confirmed that approval of the reference for assigning the look after charge to BISE Faisalabad Chairman was still awaited.
