Explainer: Why jobseekers are protesting results of a major civil service exam

Young people applying for entry-level jobs in Sindh’s bureaucracy have been protesting that only 70 out of over 4,300 of them have passed the exam held by the Sindh Public Service Commission.

They sat ten written papers for the Combined Competitive Examination (CCE), whose shockingly slim number of successful candidates was announced on May 6. This is how assistant commissioners, assistant directors and section officers at Grades 16 and 17 are hired. Lower than 16 is for drivers and clerks hired in the districts. The highest grade is 22. Think chief secretary level.

The SPSC typically passes at least five candidates per seat in its written examinations. However, according to spokesperson Hifzullah Kaka, that doesn’t necessarily apply to the CCE. Nevertheless, the 2024 results still struck protesters as impossible to accept.

Alarm bells started ringing when the detailed marks certificates were uploaded after the results were announced. For instance, the 100-mark optional subject Criminology with a single exam paper was shown as two papers worth 200 marks in the detailed marks certificates. “At first, we thought it might be a mistake,” said Farman Ali, a candidate leading the campaign. “But it wasn’t limited to Criminology. We saw the same issue in Environmental Science as well.” SPSC spokesperson Kaka did not respond to a request for clarification and declined to comment, saying that the matter was in court. When Dawn visited the SPSC on August 5, guards did not permit entry.

By May 7, the day after results were uploaded, social media was flooded with allegations of manipulation to pass a favoured few. That’s when the Sindh Students Action Committee got organised, according to one of the protestors, Wajahat Ahmed. A rally was held after which the protestors decided to keep up the pressure by refusing to move from outside the SPSC head office on Hyderabad’s Thandi Sarak.

According to journalist Imdad Soomro, who has covered SPSC for over a decade, the commission has long been a source of concern. “When I investigated it, I found that around 40 per cent of appointments were political, 40pc were made based on money, and only 20pc were on merit,” he claimed. “Gradually, merit came down to around 5pc, while the rest were political appointments or based on money.” Candidates who perform exceptionally well in the written examination are often eliminated at the interview stage, while those with lower written scores are given higher marks in the viva.

The protesters say the court proceedings have done little to help. The camp continues, with candidates insisting they will stay until their demands are met: scrap the CCE-2024 and hold fresh exams, the chairman Muhammad Rizwan along with all commission members should resign, and an independent judicial commission should investigate SPSC examinations and recruitments for grades 16 and 17 over the past five years, among others.

Header image: Protesters camp outside SPSC head office on Hyderabad’s Thandi Sarak. — All photos by Yumna Khan