Balochistan is the most impoverished province of Pakistan. Living stand of people in Balochistan is lowest among all the provinces of Pakistan. Unemployment is rampant in the province and it’s really hard for educated youth to get jobs. Government jobs are the only source of employment in the province. In such scenario recruitment process of government jobs must have been robust, transparent and free of any nepotism. Unfortunately, that’s not the case and there are several flaws in government jobs recruitment process due to incompetence of incumbent Balochistan government.
In budget of 2014-15, Balochistan government had announced recruitment on over 4,000 jobs in different departments. Apart from recruitments on few hundred vacancies there was not much employment during the last fiscal year. The main reason that recruitment process can’t be completed was that government ministers could not agree on formulae to share jobs. It’s a normal practice in Balochistan where Provincial ministers along with departmental secretaries give away the jobs to either their relatives or sell them to common people. Dr. Malik Baloch and his cabinet miserably failed to bring any change to this cruel practice which virtually closes the door of employment on under privileged class of Balochistan who can’t afford to buy jobs.
Hundreds of jobs were advertised in civil secretariat of Balochistan but the recruitment process never moved beyond that point. Some ministries re-advertised their jobs and handed over the task of conducting tests to Balochistan Testing Service. This not only delayed recruitment process but also made it difficult for under privileged students to pay the fee of tests conducted by BTS. Advertised jobs in quite a few departments were cancelled because the relatives of concerned ministers had not passed the test.
Then comes National testing Service (NTS), largest testing body of Pakistan. Provincial government hired the services of NTS to conduct tests for vacancies of over 4,000 teachers in education department. This process was marred by irregularities from the outset. Test fee set was NTS was Rs. 1000 which was unacceptably high. According to sources, NTS earned over RS. 100 million form this test fees alone. Application process started in December last year and even now final recruitment is not in sight. During tests there were complaints of mismanagement in many districts including Quetta, Mastung, Killa Saifullah, Jhal Magsi amongst others. In short NTS failed to do a proper job.
Balochistan Public Service Commission (BPSC) is the body which carries out recruitment of gazetted jobs. In past, this body was marred by corruption of its former chairman and members. Appointment of new chairman brought some sort of betterment to BPSC but new rules increased the hurdles in way of recruitment. New rules of BPSC ask candidates to verify all their documents from issuing authorities before submitting applications. This rule has virtually made it impossible for a lot of candidates to submit applications on time. BPSC extended its deadline for recruitment but again this is not the solution of the problem. People at BPSC fail to realize the inconvenience that they are causing for applicants in Balochistan.
Government of Balochistan need to realize their responsibility in this regard and should attempt to remove the hurdles in recruitment process. All ministers and secretaries should not be allowed to recruit persons of their choice in their departments. Practice of merit should be ensured and there should be no room for nepotism. At the same time, structural improvements are required in the job recruitment system to make it more robust and convenient for people.
Improvements in government job recruitment procedure are must but it will only solve a minor part of the problem. Unemployment woes of the problem will not be solved until private sector employment opportunities are not generated. So far, Government of Balochistan has not done anything to create private job opportunities and its one more addition to long list of failures of incompetent government of Dr. Malik Balch and his allies.
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