PESHAWAR - Area residents and candidates have alleged irregularities in the selection and recruitment test for job openings at Timergara hospital in Lower Dir district while they also alleged that several staffers of the local hospital were transferred to the far-off Chitral district as reprisal for participating in the ongoing protest campaign against the recent selections in the job tests.
Talking to The Nation, Wajidullah from Dir Youth Jirga stated Timergara Medical College has been established recently and the staff is now being hired for it. “The candidates who have passed the test and called for interview mostly belong to the PTI that rules KP,” he claimed.
“There were 436 posts including 172 of basic scale-17 and above while there are around 264 vacancies of BS-1 to 16. However, only 177 posts were advertised due to known reasons.
He also said that the test was conducted through a hitherto unknown agency, ie Hiring Testing Service, which he said also caused apprehensions regarding the reliability of the selection procedure. Several residents said that Malakand’s Regional Health Officer Dr Shaukat Ali, who serves as project director of the college, is responsible for the selection procedures for Timergara Medical College.
One of the area residents told this correspondent that his immediate family member was among those transferred to Chitral district as reprisal for participating in the protest rallies. He said the locals are approaching the court soon against the alleged merit violations.
When approached, the Regional Health Officer for Malakand Dr Shaukat Ali said that mostly the protest is being staged by Jamaat-e-Islami activists.
“They are blaming PTI, but the successful candidates are not just from PTI but from other parties too,” he added.
He said that after the test, the testing agency gave three days’ time for the candidates to lodge complaints, if any, regarding the results but that no-one filed any complaint. Also, he added, none visited his office or the deputy commissioner’s office for complaints in this respect but they started protests after the interviews.
The regional health officer also rejected the allegation about the numbers of the vacancies and said that the total number of vacancies were 136. He also said that the government had won one case in August against a few candidates who had approached court of law.
This correspondent, however, did not receive reply from the official regarding why several employees of the Timergara hospital were transferred to Chitral.