Both treasury and opposition benches of the house are enjoying consensus on the bill to regularize almost all those ad hoc or contractual employees appointed in various projects of the provincial government since May 2013. The Act may be called the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Employees (Regularization of Services) Act, 2018 will apply to all those employee appointed on ad hoc basis against civil posts in health department; persons, who are appointed in the project on contract basis in accordance with the project policy, shall be deemed to have been validly appointed on regular basis, from the date of commencement of the Act, subject to verification of their qualifications and other credentials by the concerned government departments.
Under the draft bill, for the purpose of the regularization of the employees, the provincial government has also presented some general conditions to protect the promotion quota of all service cadre and they should possess the same qualification and experience as required for a regular post. Furthermore, they have not resigned from their services or terminated from service on account of misconduct, inefficiency or any other grounds before the commencement of the Act and the services of such employees shall be deemed to have been regularized only on the publication of their names in the official gazette.
Except, the employees mentioned in the proviso of the Act, whose services are to be regulated by their respective laws and rules, all other employees whose services are regularized under the Act or in the process of attaining service at the commencement of this Act, shall rank junior to all civil servants belonging to the same service or cadre, as the case may be, who are in service on regular basis on the commencement of this Act, and shall also rank junior to such other persons, if any, who, in pursuance of the recommendation of the KP Public Service Commission or Departmental Selection Committee, as the case may be, made before the commencement of this Act, are to be appointed to the respective service or cadre, irrespective of their actual date of appointment. The seniority inter-se of the employees, whose services are regularized under the proposed Act within the same service or cadre, shall be determined on the basis of their continuous officiating in such service or cadre; provided that if the date of continuous officiation in the case of two or more employees is the same, the employee older in age shall rank senior to the younger one.
In case of arising of any difficulty in giving effect to any of the provision of this Act, the Chief Minister may make such order not inconsistent with the provisions of this Act as may appear to it to be necessary for the purpose of removing such difficulty: Provided that no such powers shall be exercised after the expiry of one year from the coming into force of this Act. Furthermore, the Act will have overriding effect on all other laws and rules for time being enforced.
The passage of the Bill will benefit the regularization of thousands of employees working in 58 projects and cells established under the auspices of various departments of the province.