PESHAWAR: The provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has linked the processing and nomination of officials for training in foreign countries with the permission of planning and development department to ensure that right people get nominated.

Health department has issued a letter to all its attached sections, saying that proposal for all foreign trainings, events and seminars must be routed through proper channel and strictly in accordance with instructions and guidelines.

The letter said that any deviation or delayed submission of proposal could resultin non-processing ofcase.

The department has directed the director-general health services, director-general provincial health services academy and heads of all project programmes to ensure submission of nominations for foreign trainings, seminars and events on time so that the same could be processed as per rules.

Officials said that as per 1985 Rules of Business, planning and developmentdepartment had the authority to receive and process nomination for tariff abroad.

They said that planning and development department was authorised to keep contact with the federal government as well as donor agencies and foreign countries to process such matters.

`None of the departments is empowered to communicate or nominate people for events organised by donor organisations in foreign countries. Therefore, no officials are nominated directly,` they said. In this connection, the provincial government has constituted a selection committee, which will review all applications and nominations for events taking place abroad and will make final decision.

The committee is consisted of additional chief secretary of planning and development department, secretary of administration and secretaries of relevant departments. The committee will scrutinise cases and make final decision.

Any attempt by a department or an official to bypass the same committee for attending foreign events will be regarded as breach of law and the officials concerned will face disciplinary action.

The committee, officials said, was empowered to process cases and issue noobjection certificates. All the departments have been directed to strictly follow procedures for proceeding abroad for training and awareness seminars, otherwise, action will be taken against themunder Government Servants (Conduct) Rules, 1987.

The departments, they said, had been strictly instructed to abide by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Guidelines and Procedure for Overseas Trainings and Visits, 2008.

Health department has issued directives to its employees in the light of relevant laws to ensure that foreign visits are streamlined.

Officials said that health department had been sending many officials abroad for capacity building training regarding different health-related matters and such nominations had always been criticised owing to the fact that most relevant people were ignored.

They said that the new directives would benefit deserving staffers of relevant sections to receive training and utilise the same for the benefit of patients back home. In the past, several officials had undertaken such visits to foreign countries for health-related seminars because they had been nominated by the department directly to the donor countries.

`Despite complaints lodged by doctors with the donor agencies and countries against the nomination of irrelevant people, no action has been taken so far,` said officials. They said that donors remained in direct contact with respective departments and entertained the nominations at the behest of the heads of those departments.