Parliamentary Internship Programme for Senate is being implemented by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development And Transparency – PILDAT, in association with the Senate Secretariat, and is supported by USAID under its project of Strengthening National and Provincial Legislative Governance - SNPLG.

Under this programme, 28 interns are being placed with the committees of the Senate while some of these interns constitute the IT & Research Pool to assist committees in developing their websites and creating interfaces.

Interns will be paid a stipend of Rs. 7000 a month. Their performance will be evaluated monthly while as part of their internship, they will be required to write a 5000 words research report.

Parliamentary Internship Programme is an internationally accepted and practiced programme and major universities/academic institutions and Legislatures of developed democracies of North America, Europe, Australia and part of Asia practice this.

The objective behind the Parliamentary Internship Programme is to inculcate an active interest of legislative politics in the youth of the country through their exposure to the legislatures, as well as to legislators and committees with an opportunity to benefit from the fresh perspective and research support by interns.

As a Pilot Project of Parliamentary Internship Programme, from June – August 2004, a total 35 students from HEC-recognised academic institutions from across Pakistan were selected and placed as interns with the Standing Committees of the National Assembly and Punjab Provincial Assembly.

For Phase-II under which interns are being placed with Senate, HEC-recognised academic institutions from across the country were requested to nominate their talented and recently-passed-out students (who obtained degree of 16-years of education or above in the last two years) to apply for Internship Programme.

PILDAT received a total of 96 applications; 71 (74%) from Public and 25 (26%) from Private Institutions; from the disciplines of IT (29%), Political Sciences (18%), Economics (15%), Management Sciences (15%), Engineering (5%) and Others (18%). Provincial break-up of applications was: Punjab 40 or 41% of the total applications; Federal Capital 15 or 16%; NWFP 21 or 22%; Sindh 15 or 16% and Balochistan 5 or 5%. Gender composition of applicants was 63 or 66% male and 33 or 34% female applicants.

Current composition of 28 selected interns is as follows: Interns belonging to public institutions are 20 or 71%; from Private Institutions are 8 or 29%. Gender break-up is 16 or 57% male and 12 or 43% female. Provincial composition is 11 or 39% selected from Punjab; 9 or 30% selected from Federal Capital; 5 or 18% from NWFP, 3 or 11% from Sindh and 0% from Balochistan. The discipline-wise representation of selected interns is: 7 or 25% from IT background; 9 or 32% from Political Sciences; 4 or 14% from Management Sciences; 3 or 11% from Economics; 2 or 7% from Engineering and 3 or 11% from Others.

A strict selection criteria was followed according to which, based on the Academic Department Head’s first evaluation of application, an evaluation was carried out by PILDAT, followed by a final evaluation and interviews by a Selection Committee comprising chairs of Senate Committees, Veteran Academician, Representative of Senate Secretariat and PILDAT.

PILDAT has compiled a detailed Manual of the Parliamentary Internship Programme covering every detail and aspect of the Programme. Copies of Manual are distributed to selected interns, Committee Chairs and Secretariat of the Senate.

PILDAT, in association with Senate Secretariat, will hold certificate distribution ceremony for successful interns at the end of the duration of programme.