KARACHI, Nov 24: The Federal Service Tribunal has set aside the promotion of 17 aircraft engineers and asked the Pakistan International Airlines Corporation to reconvene its selection board to reconsider the eligibility of all the candidates, including the 28 senior technicians who approached it, in accordance with the existing (pre-2001/2002) criteria.
Twentyeight senior technicians had challenged the promotion of their junior colleagues as aircraft engineers under the administrative orders 25 and 26 of 2001 and 7 of 2002, which altered the promotion criteria to their disadvantage. The criteria included a degree in mechanical or electrical engineering among the qualifications for promotion. The airline said the criteria was changed to induct better qualified technicians as aircraft engineers for more advanced planes. The appellants submitted through Advocate M. Nawaz Shaikh that the change was made to benefit certain favourites.
A bench of the tribunal, comprising former Justice Amanullah Abbasi (chairman) and Nazar Mohammad Shaikh (member), observed that the PIA was competent to revise its promotion rules and the impugned rules were validly made. But the revised rules could not be applied retrospectively. “It is now a well-established principle of law that all rules, regulations and executive orders are to have prospective effect”, the bench observed, citing a number of superior court judgments.
It was also an accepted principle of law that no rule could be varied to the disadvantage of the existing employees. The appellants had acquired their licences much earlier and were more experienced than the technicians selected for promotion. The weightage given to the additional professional and academic qualifications in the revised rules worked to their disadvantage. The BE syllabus did not specifically deal with the latest high- tech aircraft and the existing fleet did not render the technicians’ licence obsolete. The airline should upgrade the skills of its employees, it observed.
