Controversies Surrounding NTS in Balochistan

Nation­al Test­ing Ser­vice (NTS) is Pakistan’s pre­mier test­ing body. Estab­lished in 2002, it has since then evolved into a mod­ern com­pet­i­tive test­ing sys­tem. With over 300 bod­ies as its client, only last year 1.8 mil­lion can­di­dates took NTS tests. Main rea­sons for its suc­cess include its self-reliance and autonomous nature which is free from gov­ern­men­tal con­trol. How­ev­er, in Balochis­tan NTS has been source of con­tro­ver­sies late­ly.

Entry test of Bolan Med­ical Col­lege (BMC), Balochistan’s only med­ical col­lege, was con­duct­ed by NTS. The test was alleged­ly out of course result­ing in the fail­ure of a huge num­ber of can­di­dates. Some stu­dents still man­aged to pass it but the major­i­ty com­plained about the test being out of course. Who is respon­si­ble for design­ing BMC’s entry test which led to such con­tro­ver­sy? It was duty of the NTS body to ensure that the entry test was based on the course which stu­dents were expect­ing.

Apart from the BMC test, NTS has also attract­ed a great deal of infamy due to exces­sive­ly high test­ing fees in Balochis­tan. Recent­ly the Balochis­tan gov­ern­ment had adver­tised over 4,300 vacan­cies in the edu­ca­tion depart­ment. NTS got the con­tract for con­duct­ing the test through a process, which is at best dubi­ous. Report­ed­ly, NTS offi­cials mere­ly gave a pre­sen­ta­tion to offi­cials of Balochis­tan gov­ern­ment and that’s it, they got the con­tract.

NTS is charg­ing job appli­ca­tion fee of Rs. 1000 per appli­ca­tion. If a can­di­date wants to sub­mit appli­ca­tions for five vacan­cies, for exam­ple, then he or she has to pay Rs. 5000 as job appli­ca­tion fee to NTS. That’s total­ly unfair keep­ing in mind the eco­nom­ic hard­ships of the peo­ple of Balochis­tan.

A com­par­i­son of job appli­ca­tion fees, paid by can­di­dates of oth­er provinces, fur­ther exac­er­bates the sit­u­a­tion for peo­ple of Balochis­tan. NTS is also con­duct­ing recruit­ment tests for edu­ca­tion depart­ment in Pun­jab and Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). In Pun­jab job appli­ca­tion fee is Rs. 600 per appli­ca­tion and in KP its mere Rs. 300. If a can­di­date sub­mits five dif­fer­ent job appli­ca­tions then he has to pay Rs. 1200 in Pun­jab and Rs. 800 in KP.

Sim­i­lar types of tests were held in Sindh in recent past. Ini­tial­ly the fee per appli­ca­tion was set at Rs. 300 but that was reduced to Rs. 30 by then edu­ca­tion min­is­ter of Sindh Pir Mazhar ul Haq. Now, the ques­tion to ask is that why the can­di­dates of the most under­priv­i­leged province are pay­ing the high­est fee to NTS? This ques­tion has been asked over hun­dred times in local news­pa­pers of Balochis­tan where peo­ple demand­ed the gov­ern­ment of Balochis­tan to reduce the appli­ca­tion fee. How­ev­er, all these requests fell on deaf ears and nei­ther Balochis­tan gov­ern­ment nor NTS both­ered to even issue a clar­i­fi­ca­tion state­ment.

NTS has a very poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem. When a caller calls the helpline, he has to wait for 3 to 4 min­utes with a queue of over 20 callers. When the turn of the caller comes, the call is most­ly dropped. This scribe failed to get any response from NTS even after call­ing them for three days and send­ing fax to man­ag­er oper­a­tions of NTS. NTS didn’t both­er to com­ment on the ques­tions of charg­ing high fees and nature of dubi­ous process that result­ed in award of the con­tract to NTS.

Sar­dar Raza Barech, advi­sor to Chief Min­is­ter of Balochis­tan on edu­ca­tion, declared com­plete igno­rance when asked about why was NTS charg­ing high­er fee in Balochis­tan. Mr. Barech even said that “he doesn’t know how NTS got the con­tract.” Pres­i­dent of Balochis­tan School Teach­ers Union (BSTU) Mr. Khair M. Sha­heen alleged that NTS had got the con­tact with­out the legal process and some­thing fishy is going on. He even claimed that NTS has so far col­lect­ed over Rs. 50 mil­lion from poor peo­ple of Balochis­tan only through edu­ca­tion department’s job appli­ca­tions.

NTS has done remark­able work in ensur­ing mer­it in both recruit­ment and admis­sions tests. Also it is much bet­ter than gov­ern­ment of Balochis­tan in con­duct­ing trans­par­ent tests. This cri­tique is not meant to make either NTS or the edu­ca­tion depart­ment vacan­cies con­tro­ver­sial. How­ev­er, NTS and Balochis­tan gov­ern­ment should not con­sid­er them­selves beyond pub­lic scruti­ny and account­abil­i­ty. They can’t brush aside the mount­ing pub­lic pres­sure for their finan­cial inter­ests.