Bhagwandas gets on with his job

[niazikhan2]

ISLAMABAD: Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) Chairman Justice (retd) Baghwandas says he is trying to slash the long wait faced by the successful Central Superior Service (CSS) candidates after appearing in the examination.

The written CSS examination is arranged every March and the result is declared close to the last quarter of the same year. Oral interviews of successful candidates are held early next year, and the final result is announced after June. This means that the FPSC takes at least 16 months to complete the exercise.

This period is apart from the two years that candidates spend at the two training academies over which the FPSC has no control. The successful candidates require some five years (including the time required for preparation of the examination) to start their actual service.

The FPSC chief said that frequent power outages were greatly affecting the FPSC work and were a major hurdle in cutting down this time period. He said he had directed his office to take every step to reduce it so that the candidates did not have to wait for long.

He said that during his recent meeting with the prime minister, he asked for allocation of funds to pay to the power company for a second electricity line to the FPSC offices. He said he was also shortly writing to Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin for immediate release of funds.

Baghwandas said that automation of record being done now would help bring about efficiency only after if there were no frequent power outages.

He said that the workload was very heavy this year. A total of 11,000 applications were received. Of them, as many as 900 candidates have passed the written examination and they are now being interviewed.

The chairman said that the interviews that began in January have so far been conducted in Islamabad and Karachi. Interviews would be conducted in Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar in the next few weeks, he said.

Baghwandas said that a building had been hired in Multan and efforts were being made to conduct interviews at this station for the first time so that candidates from this part of the Punjab did not have to come to Lahore. He said that the final results would be announced in June this year.