PESHAWAR, Aug 31: On the call of All Pakistan Clerks Association (Apca), NWFP, a complete strike was observed in the local courts and no judicial and election work was performed by its members here on Saturday.

The three-day strike started against the transfer of Apca’s eight office-bearers in five districts of the province by the Peshawar High Court, which the association termed an act of victimization by the high court’s chief justice.

In most of the cases the judicial officers had to perform the function of their readers and stenographers as from morning the staff declined to perform any duty.

Although the general body meeting of Apca was scheduled on Sept 2, but an emergency meeting of the body was held on Saturday, which endorsed the strike call, stating that after three-day they would adopt other extreme measures for forcing the chief justice to rescind his order.

The representatives of the clerks also held a meeting with the district and sessions judge, Ziauddin Khattak, but they turned down his request to resume work. They said unless the transfer order was not reversed they will continue with their strike.

Some of the office-bearers told Dawn that one of the reasons given to them by the high court for the transfer of the office-bearers, who were senior clerks in different courts at different districts, was that they were experienced and they could better perform elections duties in other districts. The office-bearers claimed that if that was the case then the chief justice should issue an order that they would stand transferred back to their respective districts once the elections process ended.

One of the employees at the sessions court informed that Monday would be a test case for the judicial officers as the concerned staff had not prepared case files on Saturday and now the judicial officer would not be having the required files on Monday.

The association claimed that the chief justice had violated orders of the chief election commissioner that no employee should be transferred during the election process. The association claimed that a dispute was going on between the Apca and the high court over filling of certain posts in the high court and now the members had been victimized.

An official of the high court claimed that these were only routine transfers. He claimed that these transfers would not effect the election process as they were neither returning officers nor presiding officers.