ISLAMABAD  - The Islamabad High Court (IHC) Thursday declared the recommendations of Cabinet’s sub-committee headed by Syed Khursheed Shah during the period of former PPP government for regularization of daily wages and contract employees of the federal government as null and void.
A single bench of IHC comprising Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui observed in the decision that the recommendations have no legal status regarding the employees who were appointed without following rules and competitive process.
The IHC single bench directed all the institutions/organizations of the federal government to properly examine and verify record of the regularized employees and only endorse the regularization of those employees who fulfill the criteria in respect of age, domicile, educational qualification and experience.
The court issued these directions on a petition filed by the senior employees of National Highways Authority (NHA) seeking de-regularization of the contractual and daily wage employees who were regularized after the recommendations of Cabinet’s sub-committee during the period of former PPP government.
The counsel for the NHA employees Tariq Mehmood Jehangiri contended before the court that all these employees were first appointed on the basis of nepotism ignoring the merit, educational qualification, age, experience, domicile and vacant posts.
He argued that the committee’s decision is affecting the seniority of the previous employees. In this regard, the counsel produced a list of around 350 employees before the court and informed the court that around 90 people in this list belonged to Multan, 60 from Sukkar and rest from the electoral constituencies of some other MNAs of the former PPP government.
Defense counsels argued that thousands of workers would get unemployed if sub-committee’s recommendations were declared null and void.
At this juncture, Justice Siddiqui remarked that everything should be done on merit and they have buried the ‘Doctrine of Necessity”.