ISLAMABAD, May 14: The Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated over 700 employees of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board who were dismissed during the PML government in 1998.
Accepting four appeals against the Sindh High Court decision, the Supreme Court bench restored the services of 711 employees. They were recruited during the PPP government in 1994.
The SC bench consisted of Justice Munir A. Sheikh, Justice Qazi Mohammad Farooq, and Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar. The court observed that while carrying out retrenchment, rules and procedures cannot be dispensed with.
Abdul Hafeez Pirzada and Feroz Jamal Shah represented the appellants, while Fazal Ghani and Raja Ghafoor appeared for the KWSB.
Two days after the employees had been sacked on July 13, 1998, the then chief minister of Sindh had ordered the reinstatement, but the KWSB’s board of directors refused to honour the orders.
The employees first approached the Sindh High Court, but their writ petition was dismissed with the observation that they should move the Federal Service Tribunal. The Sindh High Court decision was challenged in the Supreme Court.
The counsel for the appellants stated that his clients had approached the SHC not against their termination but for the implementation of the chief minister’s orders.
The counsel said that his clients were inducted into the KWSB on the probation basis and after the completion of the two-year probation, the competent authority extended it for one more year. He maintained that after the passage of the additional probation period the employees were deemed to have become permanent employees.
Mr Ghani, representing the KWSB, argued that the federal and provincial governments had adopted the down-sizing policy after an agreement with the World Bank.
Justice Munir A. Sheikh observed that the mention of the World Bank did not mean that the matter was out of the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
The counsel for the KWSB, however, informed the court that the chief minister had tried to enforce his decision in a “dictatorial manner” which could not be accepted by the department.
Justice Sheikh observed that calling the elected chief minister a dictator was not appropriate and added that what the counsel had said was reflective of the mind-set of the executive against the elected representatives.
Justice Sheikh said that elected people, being aware of the public problems, employed people but the executive removed them.
