PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa relief, rehabilitation and settlement department has removed 23 contractual employees of the Provincial Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Settlement Authority.

A notification issued on Dec 30, 2016 notes that the authority has extended the services of 58 contractual employees for a six months period from Jan 1 to June 30, 2017.

An official requesting anonymity told Dawn that the contracts of at least 23 employees hadn`t been extended.

The documents available with Dawn show that the decision to reduce the number of the authority`s personnel was made in Sept this year when the payment of sal-ary to staff members was stopped on the expiry of the contract with the USAID, which funded the operational costs of the authority, on June 30, 2016.

The planning and development department in its summary on Sept 9, 2016, noted, `the number of staff shall be reduced in a phased manner so that the performance of the organization is not affected.

`PaRRSA may rationalise the staff to reduce the financial burden.

However, a sacked PaRRSA employee said the bureaucracy misguided the chief minister and thus, depriving them of due right of service extension.

He said since the establishment of the authority in 2009, the government had not contributed even a single penny to the PaRRSA employees` salary.

The sacked official said there were enough savings in the authority`s account.

`The authority was left with Rs142.9 million, which accumulated over the years due to the dollar/rupee exchange rate currently, he said.

The former official said the amount was enough to fund theemployees` salary as well as the organisation`s operations for around two years and therefore, the extension in their services wasn`t a financial burden for the provincial government.

He said the employees with extended service contracts were getting salary from that amount and therefore, there was no reason to deny a few of them their bread and butter.

The sacked official said he and employees removed like him had spent the best parts of their lives working in the authority bur ironically, their jobs were terminated with a single stroke of pen.

`When we came to the office on Monday, we were informed that our services are no longer required,` he said.

He asked the chief minister not to fall for the `bureaucracy`s tricks`, which, he insisted, were aimed at harming his popularity.

Another sacked staff member requesting anonymity said a case of seeking regularisation of the services by the authority`s employees was pending with the Supreme Court.

He said he and other colleagues would file a contempt of court peti-tion with the Peshawar High Court against the PaRRSA administration.

The PaRRSA was created in July 2009 for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Malakand after the military operation cleared Swat valley and other parts of Malakand of militants.

The UNDP funded the payment of the salary of the authority`s employees and its operational costs from 2009 to 2012. Later, the funds for the purpose were provided by the USAID.

According to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) website, the PaRRSA`s scope was extended to other parts of the province in 2012 with the core objective of planning and coordinating the overall reconstruction, rehabilitation and resettlement process in the province. `It provides one-window facilitation to national and international development partners, it says.

When contacted for version on the development, PaRRSA programme manager Sajid Imran said he was eating dinner with family and therefore, the correspondent should call him the next day.