PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to regularise the services of 36,000 employees recruited through the National Testing Service in education and other departments during the last four years.

An official statement issued here on Tuesday said Chief Minister Pervez Khattak had in principle agreed to the overall design of the regularisation of teaching employees recruite d through NTS in education department and directed to include in it all employees recruited through NTS or such forums.

He approved the design during a meeting also attended by seniorminister for local government Inayatullah, chief secretary Azam Khan, inspector general of police Salahuddin Mehsud and administrative secretaries.

An official said 98 percent of the employees recruited through NTS belonged to education department.

The government recently regularised the services of over 700 lecturers, who were recruited on contractual basis.

The CM said regularisation of those employees would put burden of Rs35 billion on the provincial kitty on the account of pension.

The statement said the meeting discussed two point agenda that included regularisation of teachers and other employees recruited through NTS, upgradation of police officials and officials in other public sector departments and entities, the financial implications and the required approval at proper forum and the subsequent legislations for the regularisation and made a number of decisions.Mr Khattak ordered the formation of a uniform and just approach for both regularisation and upgradation of employees and said the government would spend billions of rupees on the overall design of the regularisation and upgradation.

However, he said the government expected matching efficiency from the public servants for the efficient services to the people. He directed to bring a combined case for the regularisation of teachers and other employees to the provincial cabinet for clearance in its next meeting.

Regarding the upgradation of police and employees of other departments, he directed that the already finalised case of upgradation should be brought to the agenda of the provincial cabinet in its next sitting. However, he directed the relevant departments to prepare a consolidated case of upgradation of all departments with immediate focus on studying at O&M level of establishment department in order to support and approve a just and uniformformula for the upgradation of all employees.

He issued directions for the finalisation of everything to bring a complete case to the cabinet which would be cleared at that forum and would be then put for legislation from the provincial assembly.

He also ordered the finalisation of the regularisation of employees both of IT and projects continuous in nature and required for future support to the overall service delivery system and required for good and efficient governance in the province.

The KP budget documents note that the pay and pension liability of the 494,625 government employees and 160,000 pensioners would cost the province`s kitty Rs271 billion in the current year.

`The estimated budget for the pay and pension makes up about 70 per cent of the total current revenue expenditure of 2017-18,` noted finance department white paper for 2017-18.